So, whenever you read comics, you may have noticed that characters often have quips about the powers another character has in relation to their own. A pair of people with ice powers might comment about that fact, or someone with technology based powers might talk with another tech based character about that.
This is what I'd like. The Themes system gives an overriding idea of what a character is and can do in a given situation - a character with the "Martial artist" and "fire" themes has some pretty specific connotations, regardless of what they look like or what they wear. A character with "Technology" as a theme could be expected to understand structural weak points or be able to hack a computer. A character with a "Magic" theme would likely understand a ritual.
Small things, stuff like that, that'd make the characters feel more alive. I'm really hopeful for it.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
I get that characters who are "themed" in certain ways ought to be knowledgeable about their given theme. But I guess I'm sort of missing what you are suggesting here. Are you suggesting we get some kind of functional "in-game" advantages based on our characters' concepts or are you implying some kind of "cosmetic expressions" that might include theme based emotes or canned textual responses? I guess what I'm asking is what are -you- asking for here? ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'm asking for dialogue options more than anything else. say you're a martial artist character. You bust into a temple to have a showdown with an evil ninja or something. A comment about hit martial art being stronger seems like it'd be cool; for other themes of characters, he'd just say that you aren't worthy, or can't beat him. Just as an example.
Alternately, looking at a door as a tech based character. Certainly you might have the option to just bash it down... but what if you're a character that makes technology? builds a suit of power armor and programs high-end stuff? It makes sense at that point to instead hack the door panel Same outcome (the door is open) but handled in a slightly different way.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
But what if a Super Strength character walks up to that door and just bashes it down?
Or a Controller of some sort sees that martial artist and just laughs while they hold them in place and a blaster just shoots them to death?
There are too many permutations of these interactions where someone can say "[I]my kung fu is better than yours[/I]" but in reality someone just snipes you from 1000 yds or you get controlled.
I think what needs to happen here is to organically recognize what is infront of you and just fire off an emote that you have setup to punctuate the moment.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
It would be difficult to set up NPCs to react to theming due to aesthetic decoupling and freedom on the part of the player to come up with any theme they want.
There is nothing stopping players from coming up with their own quips though.
I would kind of like this idea. A villain responding to your theme kind of like Joker in Batman (1989). "Where does he get those wonderful toys" won't work with a mutant type of hero.
https://youtu.be/T5DuIiBNl4g
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
This seems like the kind of thing that might be best handled by timely manual emote/chat responses or even RP-based reactions. As the others have implied there'd probably be far too many unique scenarios for this kind of thing to be "automated" in any useful way. Frankly I don't think the game could ever be "smart" enough to generate truly appropriate responses for me based on what I think my own character concept would call for.
That said I'm all for having as many emote/chat options as possible and the ability to set up some of these via quick keybinds so that I can be as "reactive" as possible with cool catch phases and the like.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If you are talking about actual dialog options during missions or such then I don't see why the characters theme would have any influence at all since I see MWM making those dialog options as "neutral" as possible. I don't really see them doing it on a more fine-grained level than "you force the door, you force the lock, or you unlock it", doesn't really matter how you did it as much as what you did.
While a person who deal a lot with technology (Iron Man type) has a higher "base knowledge" for spotting those inherent weak points someone with a high aptitude for magic might very well be be to cast a fairly simple spell to gain the same information, especially if the tech one needs to do a scan first to get "all" relevant information.
I kind of agree. Plus I wouldn't want my fire character saying the same things as another if we were on a team. I like the emotes keybinds myself to create my own. Like I had my female fire/fire character always enter the room with "Is it hot in here or is it just me?"
Pffft. Keybinds. I just wrote it in :p
"Let's cause some damage."
:)
Not a bad idea in concept, but I see too many people getting bent out of shape because it "doesn't fit their character".
I remember in the revamped starter content in CoH that had some line from a wolven NPC teammate where they "smelled your fear" and people lost their minds over it. I'd rather not test those waters again.
I think folks are reading too much into this idea, but I think it's absolutely perfect.
Themes would need to be pre-designated, not made up by the players willy-nilly, and would cover a lot of basic comic tropes. This would cover the bases that I was hoping to see with Origins; I want the world to care about who and what my character is. Tags like mutant, scientist, magic, martial artist, etc. would do all of that without having to hard-code in Origins. The player could choose tags only as applicable and desirable, and they would occasionally offer different, basically cosmetic options for solving problems, like how to open a door, or get past security; for missions that were already themed a particular way, they'd offer more tag-specific ways to deal with things. Like, if you were doing a Circle of Thorns mission as a Magic-oriented character, you'd get options to sense the magical energies of artifacts that would give you a clue, whereas a science/tech oriented hero might get the option to look up some strange glyph on their computer. Either way the mission continues forward, but the small steps along the way are flavored slightly different based on which themes you picked for your character; Kind of like how Traits in the Fallout games would sometimes give you those "special" dialogue choices, but minus the actual advantage you usually got.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
This, basically. This is exactly what I was talking about, and I agree that people are reading too much into it.
I'm not asking for branching mission paths based on your themes. I just want a line of dialogue or two that acknowledges what your character is capable of doing.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
While this may sound very nice and not such a big addition I fear it will have the same problem as CoH's origins had, and all other suggestions here relating to power origins. That is that it either has to be made so generic that it's not worth using for the vast majority of players or people will demand that it's made so complex (to fit their specific character(s)) that in either case it's no longer financially viable to implement. By this I mean that just because I'm a tech-based super does not necessarily mean that I have the same amount of knowledge within every field ever within "tech", same with magic, martial arts, and any other "origin" or "type" unless you make these "tags" very specific like nuclear physicist, electrical engineer, nature magic, glyph magic, judo, aikido, and so on.
Again, you're reading too much into it. If the option is presented and doesn't fit your character, you don't select it, same as with the existing options. There's literally no reason to go to either extreme of too complex or basically invisible, so stop presenting it as though those are the only ways to implement it. A nice, balanced, occasional bit of color that nods to your character's origins, skills and influences is all that's being suggested. It's either something you'd like, or it'd be irrelevant to you, so I don't understand why you'd even argue against it.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
So... would this be specific enough to give a nod to my personal "origin" regardless of how generic or specific I want to make it, or would it be a nod towards a much more basic "origin group"?
While they don't strictly need to make it really really complex I don't feel like implementing something that gives a feeling of being half-arsed and probably won't really fit the majority of player's characters (at least among those who care about it) well enough for them to actually use it is a good usage of their resources. As I said this sounds like it will have the same problems as CoH's origin system had, it was too generic to satisfy the players.
However, there will most likely also those who see the options and expect them to actually do different things since, afaik, the only times we are presented with options is due to a "fork" in the story and/or an alignment choice. So if we get these kinds of options that are purely flavor and has no influence on the story or alignment then they would most likely need to be explicitly marked as that so as to signal that it won't change anything compared to the "base" option.
To make it clear, right now I don't see it as a financially wise option. It will most likely take too much resources to implement compared to what the players get out of it.
To add to what blacke4dawn already said we're mostly arguing against it because what you're suggesting doesn't really need to be "built into" the game at all. Players could accomplish what you're suggesting with their own keybinds and RP choices that also have the added advantage of being perfectly geared for their exact character concepts as opposed to be being "shoehorned" in from a short list of hardwired generic choices pre-cooked by the Devs.
There's a very good reason why the Devs of CoH spent most of the 8.5 year run time of their game doing everything they could to REMOVE any references to their initial Origins features and why the Devs of CoT are not even bothering to include anything remotely related to hardwired Origins - that reason is that a game like this could never completely cover every possible character concept with a handful of generic categories (i.e. Magic, Science, etc.). Frankly I'd much rather have FULL control over the types of things you're suggesting here rather than have the game ever bother to waste time trying to "guess" at what would make sense for my characters.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
What it would be, as it seems plainly laid out is this...
Option A) Plain Option 1
Option B) Plain Option 2
Option C) Tech Option 1
Option D) Tech Option 2
Now, you're a non tech type. So, pick between options A and B.
You're a tech type. Pick between options A through D.
You're a tech type and you don't match up with Option C and D? Then go to Options A and B.
How hard is that to understand?
It's not "hard to understand" what's being proposed here. The problem is that it's a less than desirable implementation for a questionable QoL feature. In other words it's a bad way to handle something we don't actually need in the game.
The CoH Devs ultimately denounced their own Origin system for constricting player creativity by forcing everyone's character concept to be pigeonholed into one of a handful of generic "themes". This suggestion does nothing but attempt to "backdoor" the concept of Origins back into this new game.
Frankly I don't really want the Devs of CoT to waste their time trying to think up a collection of "themed responses" like this when they will never be truly fully appropriate to a majority of people's characters anyway. Just about the only way a system like this might work acceptably is if it provided say several thousand unique options instead of 3 or 4 barely appropriate canned ones. Since we all know the Devs would never bother to give us several thousand unique choices to choose from I'd rather this not be bothered with at all... at least until say a whole bunch of other far more useful QoL features get addressed first.
In summary this feature is at best "interesting" but totally impractical to be worth doing correctly.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
It's a chat option. Really, I don't see how chat option pigeon holes anyone. If none of the 2 special options appeal to you/your character, then you go with one of the two generic options.
Not sure how it becomes impractical to implement, when, if there's going to be chat options, it's just a couple more chat options that will all likely lead right back to the same place with a bit of flavor text.
It's not like it will be taking the writing team away from creating new powers :p
Eh, if it's any consolation there's probably a hundred or more semi-trivial QoL features I'd like to have in CoT that I'm not going to get either. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'm not exactly for this option, I'm just not against it. :p
It doesn't really seem to pigeon hole anyone and it doesn't force origin on anyone, if there is at least 1 generic option to pick.
I just hope, that if they do something like this with chat options we also get to know the tone behind it. One thing I hate about TOR is how I think a chat option will sound snarky, sarcastic, cruel, nice, loving, what have you, and it comes out totally the opposite.
I believe the biggest problem is that only you know the true look & feel for your character. There are many generalizations that could make the interaction a bit more in line with comic book tropes. In the above 'tech' based example, there could be radically different responses from a Robocop vs Cable vs Iron Man vs a Mac Guyver. I think it really boils down to the player investing as much RP as possible into these moments if that is what they seek.
In a general 1000 ft view of this suggestion, I really like it. When it comes down to figuring out how to implement it and accurately cater to the audience, I do not see a clear path to providing a good solution without listing a handful of responses for the player to choose from at every juncture.
"Just, well, update your kickstarter email addresses, okay? Make sure they're current?" - warcabbit
Despite my earlier "blanket negativity" I would actually consider myself to be more in this camp. To me the subject of this thread IS an interesting idea. I just don't see how it could be implemented in a truly satisfying way for this game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Sounds like what you all call satisfying is "Every option possible, so I never feel left out of the Tech (for example) option on my Tech character, who shouldn't ever have to take the generic chat option when a tech option is available."
To which I say, be prepared to be disappointed by the character creator, as it's not going to be very satisfying either.
I think it'd be just fine with just a few other options. If it has two generic options, then a couple tech (again, for example) options doesn't hurt anything. If the two tech options don't fit your character, you can do what all those magic, supernatural, mutant, what have you that isn't tech characters are going to do, pick between the first two options.
Obviously the "ideal" is always going to be having a million options. But then the realities of writing software hit you in the face and everything becomes a "Game of Compromises". :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
As a player, I will never consider 1 million options ideal. :p
Straight answer.
Sarcastic/Snarky/Joking answer.
Cruel answer.
RP Flavor answer 1.
RP Flavor answer 2.
For me personally, is more than enough. Even if I might wish at that time for something else to say, keeping it to 5 like that, is more than enough imo.
For the first three, please label them like that. There's little I can think of in an RP sense that would be worse than selecting what I thought was a straight answer and getting sarcasm or snark put in my mouth.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Ah, the old Bioware Wheel of Ambiguity!
Spurn all ye kindle.
Sounds like Foradain was one of those who were really turned off by the Fallout 4 dialog options...
Seriously though, none of this is super complicated. You add in a dozen or two tags that players could potentially select for their characters and add hooks for the mission's dialog system to check for specific tags. If those tags are selected, they display certain dialog options. Then it's just a matter of using those hooks and adding those options in missions when necessary; as the system for generating missions is supposed to be streamlined enough that you can import a properly formatted .csv file, a lot of the actual implementation would fall into creating those spreadsheets and their associated narratives.
As has been pointed out, there will be compromises, and there will be people who are disappointed with some details of the game. For the folks that really want to feel like their character concepts matter to the fiction, this would add tons of flavor to otherwise potentially very generic missions.
That it can't cater to every unique concept, origin or skillset that players could come up with isn't a reason not to do it; instead it would encourage creativity by adding soft constraints to the fiction; if you want to engage this particular system, engage with the fiction of the world, rather than doing whatever wild thing you can think of. But if you still want your off-the-wall concepts, there's no punishment for doing so; you just might not be able to engage with this one system as fully as you otherwise might.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
Nope, Cinnder called it: Bioware, specifically SW:TOR
I suspect that making the dialogue to match all the different tags would be the hard part. But if the devs can find the time and/or the writerpower to do it, it would be great.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
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Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Foradain: Ah well. I saw a lot of similar gripes about FO4, and was more than once unpleasantly surprised by the gap between expectation and reality; It wasn't much of a choice for me to install one of the dialogue mods that displayed the full text.
As for the difficulty, it would indeed be in the dialogue and mission creation; But it still wouldn't have to be a lot. Even 1-2 potential options per mission would be amazing and would make them feel a lot more tailored; But it's also worth mentioning that there's been talk of player-generated missions being available as part of the actual game, rather than being virtual sandboxing like CoH did, so given that possibility and a decent enough vetting process, I have a feeling that flavorful, highly tailored missions could become pretty damned common; It's one thing for a few mission writers to crank out hundreds of deep, multi-level missions with tag-specific options, and an entirely different thing for hundreds, perhaps thousands of players to create one or two lovingly crafted missions.
The best part is that with the mission creation being so systematic, this proposed tag system wouldn't even need to be a launch feature (though I know I would be thrilled if it was). It could be implemented later, and then existing missions could be retroactively reworked, and new ones added, to take full advantage of the feature.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
It is more complicated than has been said. Our current system isn’t set up to recognize such flags. We would have to add code for it.
Worse, we would have to go back and rewrite a lot of dialogue to either include the descriptions based on flags or even provide space for them. I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to break that tomour comp lead who would I think turn have to break the news to the team.
Then we have to have UI changes to Chargen and extend minimum time to create a character using all options. And while “compromises” for some may seem acceptable when it comes to describing what a character looks like or what they do, we have gone through great lengths to NOT do just that, pigeon holing character’s to boiled down templates of “why ornwhat they they do”.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
Then it's not worth it. Not really a problem, as I see it; the idea was just a small something that I thought would be neat if added to the game, but if the system isn't in place and you're already this far along, I doubt it's worth uprooting things to add it in, especially for something so small.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
But probably, you could allow players to choose the format of the phylactery of their character so as to customize (once more ^^) the ambiancy (?) of their character.
Like a ice operator with speech bubble like if the phylactery is frozen, a cloudy style, a fire style, a thought style, even a flower one or feather style. I think there is, here, something to think about because it could be an item to sell in the cash shop, or something which can be gain as a reward and if it's well done enought, it will not be horrific to see phylactery like that everywhere. And, if we push the idea far away, you could propose a color custimzation of the speech bubble :)
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