It's good to see you have a positive view on the game...

For one, it this would be just as impossible to do without voice, as with voice. And voiced dialogue didn't limit the conversation that much as you might think it is.

Secondly, how would only the statistical elements that rise up, and only changes the gameplay subtly considered "true RPG elements", while choosing different skills over time is just another FPS element?

And thirdly, it will probably be shocking to you and many other people here, but TES is and always was mainly an action-RPG. Arena was based on Ultima Underworld an action-RPG spinoff of Ultima games. They still have way more depth than your average Diablo clone though.

.. maybe if you stop waxing poetic and get to the facts...



For example, "they haven't yet pushed beyond good and evil"... what does that mean? What is beyond good and evil? "Good and evil" are supposed to be opposite ends of a spectrum, like best and worst. What's beyond that? Nothing. There is a spectrum between them, sure, but in order for any point on that spectrum to be depicted in a game, it has to be quantified. So games now have options for good, not so good, neutral, bad, evil. Now, what qualifies as good, not so good, neutral, bad, evil? Well, that depends on so many things for everyone that it would be impossible to quantify them all and put them in a game, so developers set a standard within the setting of the game as to be able to quantify it, and code it accordingly.

I'll iterate, "role playing game" simply means that your computer character is going to play a role in how the story unfolds based on decisions made when presented with choices to make, not that it somehow is going to become your avatar in some computer generated life simulator.

Still what you're asking is impossible. Or at least nigh on impossible. You've given a few examples. There are thousand of combinations of characters, and thousands of shades of grey between the two "evil" and "righteous". I understand what you're trying to say, and that you want NPCs to react to you if you're a bit of a shady character, or if you're something else etc. But even with just those few examples you would have to add an extra three responses/reactions to each NPC that you want to take notice/be affected. Times that by how ever many options would satisfy you, and you're going to be in the hundreds straight away. You won't be able to fit that amount of responses in terms of spoken dialogue on a DVD, nor are you likely to want to spend that amount of money it would cost to employ the people to not only write those dialogue lines (even if they are not spoken), but the amount of programming needed to adjust the responses appropriately. The reason that the game is so heavily based in stats is because that is a very easy and obvious distinction between each character. Bridging the gap between hard maths and the gamers imagination is no easy feat, and isn't likely to happen in a game that has such a large amount of other mechanics all going on.

The only way to have such a large range of characters between good/evil is to severely limit the options, and have a much more linear game than what TES does. Look at Mass Effect. A big selling point of that game is the choices you can make, and the impacts they have, and how they define your character. Even then there is only so much they have achieved, and that is very linear game compared to TES.

No, I didn't.

In facade, a programmer has put in a dynamic decision making system which decides the whens and ifs of its answers. Of course we are not talking about sentient programs here: I assume lines are chosen based on attributes, not that the computer understands them.... I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Facade producing vaguely coherent dialogue. In fact, as I noticed with different playthroughts, the dinner story had a pretty defined progression but whether you unlocked certain dialogue depended on what you said. That's pretty impressive considering the game used natural language. I'm also sure we're not talking about a simple randomizer here. I saw a lecture of the guy who made it and it seemed pretty advanced AI stuff.

To Wyatt Hertz

You're talking about the difference of the character you want to build (or have already done so in your mind) and the one you see "pretending" to be him on your screen. The on-screen character is boiled down to the TES norms. Good-evil-knight/sneaky-marksman-assassin/etc/etc. TES actually has more freedom in character creation than other games.

You say that your in game character feels vague and I agree. I always felt that nobody asked my opinion about anything so he didn't have any real choices to define him. Even if he did make a choice, it wasn't acknowledged properly by the NPCs.



The thing is that even if you roleplay your character in Oblivion, NPCs would eventually come slap your imagination in the face by treating you like a 6 year old.

I'm hoping Skyrim gets it right.

Short of "Better Than Life" or "The Matrix", seems you are going to be disappointed for the next few decades. At least until computational speed/power and true AI come into effect.

Aside from that, im sorry to tell you friend, but as many have stated above, youre gonna have to use YOUR AI to compensate for what youre missing.

There is good news though. If you stay healthy and live a few decades, your patience may pay off quite nicely. Until then enjoy the ever improving ride. :thumbsup:

That is not what you posted. You posted, and I quote:
"..but didn't program when or if they would say them. "
Putting in a dynamic decision making system which decides when and if based on attributes, is pretty much programming "when" and/or "if" .

There are just too many good points approaching this topic from too many angles to quote one person above. I think the common issue we all see are limitations and risks to the "system". Whether you are talking about the style of game TES is, or the computing capabilities of today, or the writing capabilities of the devs, or time/budget concerns, its the capabilities of the system that are in question. Motivations and backstories are inextricably linked to emotions, behaviors, and reactions of the actors in the setting, even if you only want it to be more relatable to your "class". You can't have these types of idiosyncrasies existing in a vaccuum; you must have a plot that we can identify with on at least some minor level as thinking and feeling beings to have something as complex as "motivation".

The system is just not up to the task. The type of game TES is doesn't really lend itself well to this because it is an unscripted, non-linear, sandbox game focused heavily on other aspects of adventuring. To accommodate well written enough, believable enough, and emotional enough stories to supply the level of detail in the motivation and RP for the PC, the only way to do this with the current level of technology would be to write each possible story out manually in hundreds, if not thousands upon thousands of scenarios and variable checks. The writers and programmers would basically have to imagine a generalized story for every general type of "class" someone could come up with, and cross-reference it with what the player does, who they do it with, and in what order, and change the next thing the player does based on the preceding. Not only would this take a lifetime, but it would take up far more than a DVD's worth of space just for the voice acting alone.

Indeed to have a game as open-ended as TES, and have the same level of story-telling that a more linear game has at the same time, you really do need AI or something pretty close to it. Maybe with enough money and time, a game like this could be made in text form. But with visuals of believable facial expressions and moods, body language, and especially voice acting, it would be pretty much impossible. You would have to have a program that had "emotional context sensitive awareness" of the condition of each actor in the game, and software that generated voiced dialogue on demand by simulating human voices from the text-based version the AI had generated which would also be emotional context sensitive. Nothing just "happens", so either you have to have writers manually write out tens of thousands of pages of possibilities, or go this super-futuristic insane computer with story writing and emotional capabilities route, neither of which are remotely feasible.

Again though, IF, and that's a big if, it could be done it would certainly be amazing. For now, I think you must stick to either sandbox OR deep storytelling. You cannot have both. You could play a tabletop game with a good DM and have him come up with things as you go along and explore freely, but having the computer do it for you is just not going to happen.

The copious amounts of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PurpleProse med my brain hurt a bit. Try toning that down a bit.

Anyways. The "thief", "monk", "agent" monikers have never really mattered in ES games, they have only been labels for a group of skills and attributes. There has never been any deeper meaning instilled in them beyond mere mechanical playstyle. Admittedly some of them are named so that one could assume a moral meaning in them but that name has always been assigned because they were superficially similar to something that had that moral depth.
Secondly the games already react to your actions. Those reactions are extremely simplistic, of course, because there is no other way to make them in this quantity at this time. Your brain is more powerful than a supercomputer, of course it will outperform any machine of silicon. It is simply unfair to assume that anyone would go through the trouble to put down every permutation your brain can come up with, and for any computer to be able to process those permutations. And keep in mind, stats and maths are necessary when working with computers. That is the only way they can see and think, so everything has to be boiled down to a mathematical equation and some numbers at some point for it to come up on your screen.
Furthermore ES has things that don't fit in the spectrum of good-evil, the daedra. Many of them are perceived as evil but that is just what it is, a perception, something extremely human to do. We apply labels of good and evil without even acknowledging that we are doing it. We use that yardstick because it is the only one we know.

And after having written all this, I have completely forgotten the OPs point.

Let me see if I can boil this down to something people can digest - particularly for the benefit of those who are prattling on about AI.

Let's start with a representation for the number of choices (in character set-up, dialogue, quest outcomes, what-have-you) Beth provides in a TES game, and designate that number of choices X.

In the end, (as I understand it at least, and with the recognition that synopsis tends to bring a loss of clarity) all the OP is really advocating is that the next game contain some number of choices greater than X - not that it contain an infinite number of choices or that it be built around an AI capable of generating the perfectly appropriate and unique response to every character decision, but simply that the number of choices is always something greater than the previous X.

And the OP is pointing out, and lamenting, rightly in my opinion, the fact that that is not the direction in which TES games have been and appear to be moving. That, in point of fact, the number of choices in a given game is consistently something less than the previous X.

I saw no request for AI. I saw a request that Beth move in the direction of providing more opportunity for the open-worlded customization upon which they pride themselves, and that request prevented to counter the fact that, in spite of their PR, they actually have moved and appear to be continuing to move in the direction of providing less such opportunity.

And that's roughly that.

This argument can't be made clearly without specific examples though. All we are left with here is saying that its "not good enough RP". The only solution that can be a catch all for this non-distinct ailment is a system that accounts for all possible scenarios that could be being complained about. If some specific arguments instead of general are given, then those could be discussed in a meaningful way, but otherwise, it really is a catch all argument against a catch all complaint.

And what everyone else is saying (even if you tone down the AI and infinite possibilities) is that it is simply not possible to have an increase in X that will have any significant or even noticeable impact without severely limiting the game to something much more linear along the lines of Mass Effect. It's one or the other, not both, for this generation of consoles at least.

I don't think "pushing beyond good and evil" (whatever is it that meant) is just "I want more than X"
... so, you want something "greater than X". What is X? Ok. How much greater than X? And how exactly you want that manifested in-game?

What if this "greater than X" is still not enough, because it won't be. There's no way to create a choice for every conceivable character without generalising them into archetypes which the OP doesn't seem to prefer.

Also, what are these "choices" we're talking about anyway? Choices in what? Dialogue? Character creation? Combat style? Witty remarks? And how are there less choices?

There was a time when I might've been drawn into a squabble over minutiae at the behest of a poster (or posters) who wished to indulge in the dependable message board tactic of seeking to provide at least the appearance of countering minor and/or diversionary points and thereby nominally providing at least the appearance of having successfully countered the original statement.

That time has passed.

Any and all are perfectly free to disagree with my opinions. I don't mind.

Which opinion?
The "RPG are going downhill", or the "This forum is full of idiots" one?

TES games have enough 'choices' in them. We dont need a bunch of pointless dialogue choices ala Mass Effect.

.. so you are basically another poet who likes to complain about abstracts. Fair enough.

Kind of funny, how on one post you lament the absence of something (soemthing BTW which no game has really ever provided, ever), then on another call that something "minutae"... but hey...

I ve been complaining about OP for years, actually since MW. OB was the peak of it.
Beth prefered to fire the script writter and game designers and hire more GFX people, because actually the games are each time more beautifull and more stupid.
It seems new gen is more interested in beauty than consistency.
Sad.

Its the industry standart for USA and western european games. The only game producers that are rising buy interesting games are the eastern european ones.
Actually USA game producers and publishers are brain dead.
For each 10 games i buy, 8 have eastern european origin. They seem the only one that still give a damn to non GFX content.
And unfortunatly Beth is no exception.
Skyrim for me is the last chance, if it fail i ll forgot it ever exist.

Wrong, you re probably too young to remember.

Oh, please... for one, I am 46 years old. And two, no video game has ever delivered what the OP is waxing poetic about. Never ever. So stop it.

...

you know what, I give up. I let you all live in your dreamworld, I don't want to ruin your positive attitude...

-So what does all this long-winded mumbo jumbo mean when it comes to the game and how it plays? Where’s my beef and what do I want to see changed? I guess it can be vaguely summed up like this; it’s just not enough to allow me the ability to create a title for the specific type of character which I have in mind, nor do I feel that selective skill progression alone is enough to define that character. We need more individualized in-game substance and circumstance to really feel as though a less mechanical or generic experience is being had…one suited to the type of character I’m attempting to roleplay. If such substance were added effectively and creatively to the gameplay, than it would go a long way to re-enforcing the role I was trying to play, thus increasing immersion and adding unique depth to my character. The problem is, somewhere along the line, statistics and skillsets became the be all, end all, driving and defining forces that shaped our characters in the game, and although these elements of game design are important, they alone cannot fully create a roleplaying experience, nor can standardized responses from the world and its NPC’s, which only take into account the most computerized and basic of our character’s traits.-

For people who don't want to read a boring rant. sure you did a great job of detailing your dissatisfaction of the smalls ways the devs are trying to make the game more peronalized but at the back of my mind a little voice was screaming, "GET ON WTH IT!."

Basically you want more dialogue paths that cover every type of character or mood. Quests for anyone and every theme, skillset, and tone. You just want more specific ventures to take with your character.

Do you have a solution to this problem? I'm not trying to get on you, but it just seemed to me just a well written and detailed rant with no real helpful tip on how to get out of this hole devs are creating with shallow RPGs.

If I might interject, again, to repeat the point I already made in this regard, the "solution" is really quite simple. If we assign to whatever set of choices we might be considering the value X - the next game should contain more than X choices - not fewer. That's it. "Choices" refer to any of the aspects of the game regarding which the player might make a... well... a "choice. Weapons, armor, magic effects, skills, NPCs, dialogue options, quest paths... whatever. I didn't get the impression that the OP was asking for an infinite number of such - enough for "anyone and every theme, skillset, and tone." That just seems to be the strawman du jour. What the OP was I thought relatively obviously asking was that Beth move in the direction of consistently adding more choices to the game rather than fewer. That's all.

I have no idea why that request has engendered such determined opposition.....

He sounded like he wanted a choice for every type of character. Not just more options.

And I'm not against it, I just thought through this whole page and a half statement he would have went into more depth on how we could solve the problem.:shrug: