I know it was rudimentary. But somehow, it made me feel like I was actually conversing with the characters and this made me feel more like I was in Vvardenfall and less like I was in my living room.

Who would like to see it brought back!?

Speech does basically the same, with a difference that intimidation, admire and bribe options are directly in dialogue choices.

Perhaps but the options should come up more often IMO. I prefer the options in dialogue rather than the wheel definately but we should have the chance to use them more .

I think Skyrim's speech system is much better than Morrowind's.

I also think it's still not very good.

I think that Skyrim has the worst interaction with NPCs in any game in the series.

I miss the system from Daggerfall, where you could choose a tone associated with what you say (polite, blunt, neutral) and different people would respond differently to different tones.

If I were to add a fourth tone I would add "sarcastic" or "joking."

@daggerfallftw: You didn't play Oblivion, did you.

I agree that Speech-related dialogue options are pathetically scarce. My biggest gripe, though, is the fact that to raise Speech properly you have to sell items one-by-one.

I miss the ability to ask NPC's about their background, ask rumours etc. Granted a lot of it in Morrowind was the same but at least it created the illusion of conversation. Slighly off topic I prefer the fact that Morrowind NPC's go about their business whereas the Skyrim ones stop dead in their tracks to greet you with repetitive annoying phrases, "Let me guess someone stole your sweetroll" etc.

I miss Morrowind's speech system since Oblivion. NPCs having voice is neat but we lost a lot of dialog options.

Not really . Don't much like the Skyrim implementation either, where they munged barter and speech. Of the various TES/FO games IMHO FONV did it the best. Would like something much deeper still but to be honest I don't know exactly what that might be.

I dislike all the speechcraft systems equally, I think they're all stupid.

Not to mention the dynamic reputation system involved.
I did, and their system was borderline absurd, but I'll take an honest attempt at dynamic conversation over the absense of all efforts any day.


Not being able to speak to guards or other NPCs is pathetic.

I mostly miss the Taunt option when it comes to speechcraft related things in Morrowind.

I, like many others, also miss things like "background" and "rumors" topics on all NPCs. I'd rather have text driven dialogue with a ton of content than voice overs with minimal content. Though, to be fair, Skyrim does voices 100% better than oblivion did. Oblivion had almost no dialogue content, Skyrim has a fair bit, but still nowhere close to Morrowind. (But it does do some things better, like overhearing conversations and improving immersion that way)

Honestly I like Skyrim's minimilistic speechcraft system way better than Oblivion's ridiculous persuation wheel system. It doesn't feel blatantly artificial, either you have the skill or not, no rolling dice or playing a minigame. Even hiding the npc's disposition I think is an improvement, makes the game feel more real when you can't read someone's mind and know how much they like you.

However, the system feels kind of like it was an afterthought to the developers because you almost never get a chance to use your speechcraft skills. I mean, here's just a few basic ideas I just came up with off the top of my head that you should be able to do but can't: Persuade merchants to get discounts . Intimate people who witness your crimes into staying silent. Ppersuade friendly npcs into telling you personal details about themselves they normally wouldn't share. Persuade people into being your followers. Give most quests alternate solutions that require high speech checks (only a very few of them seem to have them).

It's kind of sad that the only reliable way to level your speechcraft is to just sell lots and lots of stuff one at a time.

Technically that's the main thing Speech is used for already. I agree with you though; I bet they thought up the mechanic early on, and then later in development had trouble implementing it because voice acting = less choices.

I think since this thread is all about Speech I'm going to shamelessly link my mod that makes Speech more useful in case anyone wants it.
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2318

I prefered being able to bribe, intimidate or admire npcs whenever I wanted, not just because a script writer decided I should have a choice to.
In Oblivion I used that persuasion overhaul mod, was so good being able to choose how to persuade rather than the stupid wheel game.

I'm very disapointed in speechcraft in Skyrim, especialy when their excuse for cutting skills are "Who makes a character that runs?" axe athletics.
Well, who makes a character that doesn't sell things? The only way to not raise speechcraft is to never sell anything.... >_<

I prefer the barter system from morrowind too. Select what you want to buy, select what you want to sell, alter the septim result and see if the merchant will accept. It also ment you could do direct trades without having any money.

Asking someone about latest rumours could lead on to "radiant events" taking place.

- You ask about latest rumours
- The local makes mention of bandits robbing people along road X
- The game then spawns a group of bandits in location X attacking a caravan

I know that's not very creative, but i'm sure someone who is creative could do something much greater along those lines.

Which reminds me... Why can't I ask guards where the tavern is? Seriously, why do they even exist now? that was all they did in oblivion, now all they do in skyrim is drone on and on about bad knees and pointed shafts.

LMAO! Thanks for the laugh so early in the morning, I needed that!

I hated the speechcraft minigame with a passion. I am glad it's gone.

The problem with the skill is either they make it really boring or not character-based enough (That is to say it becomes player skill based). They need to make a minigame that is actually fun and still keeps it MOSTLY character skill based. That is quite a challenge. In Skyrim it's completely skill based, but you barely notice it's even there because it's just normal NPC interaction and has no player aspect.

Speechcraft never was a strong point of TES.

Arena and Daggerfall basically just allowed you to be friendly, neutral and unfriendly with little consequences, as you just used it to ask random people about the latest rumors, and every city had a realistic count of population.

Morrowind's speechcraft system was very rudimentary. You used a random dialogue option to try and make them like you better, which then resulted in a discount or sometimes a quest or information.

Oblivion's speechcraft system was ridiculous. Playing Simon has nothing to do with speechcraft, you used that minigame to get a discount and very rarely a quest or info.

Given the previous games, Skyrim's system is just consequential. You have a lot of perks that basically all give you a discount. Automatically. It's actually Mercantile, not Speechcraft. Money is worthless in Skyrim, though, thus Speechcraft and its perks are worthless too.


A good speechcraft system would give you certain dialogue options *only* when you have the neccessary speechcraft skill or perks, if you want to use your perks for combat you aren't made to solve conflicts through dialogue. The problem is again the learning by doing system: when you convince the guy to help you without doing some generic quest for him first, you miss out on a couple of skill-uses/increases while you might get the same or even more XP in a XP-based system.

I was working on a mechanic to replace the mini-game in Oblivion with something that combined Morrowind's options (Intimidate, Taunt, Bribe + several others I added) with Skyrim's context-sensitive persuasion options. I can tell you: it's not easy to create a robust, realistic system.

The problem with a system that only uses context-sensitive persuasion options is that it doesn't allow you to inject your character's personality into the game world in a robust way. In my system, you could go around and intimidate every NPC and if you were successful, they would start to fear you. It didn't have to be quest-related. It just allowed you to interact differently with any and all NPCs. If they feared you enough, they would react differently: they would respond with different dialogue, give you information, etc. Some of them would actually avoid you. I was working on mechanics that would allow you to take things from them (mugging), or 'convince' them not to report crimes. You could also taunt people into attacking you, disguise yourself as a member of a faction, etc. There is tremendous RP potential in a robust Speechcraft system.

There were also context-sensitive mechanics, like lying, which was always context sensitive, and some mechanics that were sometimes context sensitive and sometimes not, like bribing or appealing to an NPC's sense of justice. A good system needs both context-sensitive mechanics, and mechanics that allow the player to impose themselves on the world 'just because'.

All of my Speechcraft tests were % based and determined by a variety of factors. It was easier, for example, to intimidate an NPC if you had a high Strength, and you were wearing high-quality weapons and armor. It was easier to Taunt someone if you had a high Intelligence (the primary determinants were still your Personality and Speechcraft). I would never implement a flat, skill-based mechanic (ie. you only get the option if your skill is high enough) for two reasons: first, because it's not realistic, any character should be able to attempt any action, regardless of their chance of succees, and two, because it makes it much more difficult to train a skill. If you can only improve by using a skill and you start with a low skill that never gives you an option to use it, how do you get better? In reality, the converse relationship is probably more true: when your skill is low, it is relatively easy to improve it; when it is high, it should be fairly difficult to make it better. With flat Speech test mechanics you have to implement a system that works opposite to the way it actually does.

Edit: Incidentally, I've earned far more levels in Speech in Skyrim by completing 'convince so-and-so to do such-and-such' quests than through selling gear. Completeing one of these tests almost always earns you close to a full level, and there are a fair number of them. You need to sell hundreds of pounds of loot to earn a level through merchants.

Magician, what you have would be a huge advance. The wheel in Oblivion was worse than absurd. There was a mod that completely changed the system. Huge improvement but still nowhere near what you are proposing. I would love to see something that moves in the direction of your proposal.

Actually, I think it was "Who makes a character that does not run?" Everyone starts out with athletics maxed... (albeit, a not very extreme version of athletics.)

Anyways, I have envision speech menus like this:

canned option 1
canned option 2
canned option 3
other

The canned options are perhaps not completely fixed, but are intended to represent "likely" avenues of discussion. Also, if there is any implied sub-text, it should be clear here (sarcastic, friendly, angry, whatever).

And "other" would be an escape hatch -- it would be sort of like the blunt "flatter/bribe/taunt/intimidate" options, but instead of being designed for simplicity -- the canned options give you simplicity -- it's a statement builder interface, where you can declare your emotional tone, the kind of discussion you want to have, and so on... and, most of the time, it might be futile or result in not-so-great responses. So I would also want to be able to save my own "canned requests" so I did not have to build them over and over. "Hey, have you seen Olfrid Battle-Born?" or "That's great. [sarcastic]" would probably tupically yield the NPC equivalent of "Whatever" or "You may have already won..."

Unfortunately, computers are dumber than ants, so there are always going to be unsatisfying conversational sub-trees. But I keep wishing for something different.