Desire for Better Dialogue

For a while now it's kind of bothered me that most of the time when you're having a conversation with an NPC, when you keep asking about the same topic you keep getting the same detailed answer as if it were recited by a robot. For example, Darvam Hlaren in the Ald'ruhn Council Club always says the following when you ask about Services:

"House Redoran services are in the Manor District, under Skar. Temple services? The Ald'ruhn Temple is on the east side of town. Go to Fort Buckmoth south of town for Imperial Legion and Imperial cult services. The Fighters Guild and Mages Guild are near the South Gate. Pricy but high-quality clothier, alchemist, and enchanter shops are under Skar as well. You can get more reasonable prices, but a smaller selection, from the smith, clothier, trader, pawnbroker, and bookseller near the entrance to Skar."

Every time you select the topic, he says the same thing. Does he have it memorized or written on a card that he keeps in his pocket? Is he thinking, "Great. Another tourist. Time to go through the spiel again."? Poor man.

Wouldn't it be nice if he said something different each time? Maybe the second time he could be briefer.

"House Redoran under Skar, Ald'ruhn Temple, Fighters and Mages Guilds, various shops, and Fort Buckmoth south of town."

Or, even better, maybe each time you asked he could be more specific about one particular thing. He might start with talking about how Ald'ruhn is a Redoran town and give details about Redoran services under Skar. The second time he could mention all the shops. The third time he could mention the Temple or the Fort. Et cetera. When he ran out of things to say, he could just say "I think I've covered everything." or "I can't think of anything else." If you kept asking and he decided to stop being polite he could suggest that you write it down on a piece of paper or in a journal if it's so important, or suggest that you go wander around and look, or maybe start questioning your intelligence or suggest that you need a nap or ask if you're drunk. You get the idea.

Also, what if some potentially useful or interesting information were buried further into a topic rather than being the first thing he said?

I did a little bit of this with the waitress' dialogue in TGD01 The Rat in the Pot. I wanted to get back to a more traditional RPG or Adventure game way of handling NPC conversations. Since dialogue is recorded in the player's journal unless specifically removed by a script command, you can always flip back to see what someone said.

What I would like to know is, would you enjoy talking to an NPC whose dialogue worked this way?

Please, share your thoughts. I enjoy the company.

I'm all for more complex conversations. Most especially for the more central characters. The only problem is I'm sure this would be alot of work just adding all the dialog and I'm not sure that some of these things (like having it change randomly) are even possible...

It would certainly make dialogue feel more dynamic. Although the existing system of linking topics would still be there, so you'd probably need implement this idea in a way that effects each individual related sub-topic as well. (Or else it wouldn't feel very seamless, imo. ) Anyways, I think this sounds like an awesome idea, and I'm looking forward to see where this goes. :foodndrink:

Most certainly, more varied and deep dialog would be a very welcome enhancement, making it worth while to press an NPC further about the same topic.

You might want to consider a time delay of a day or two between more detailed responses to the same topic. Otherwise the player could just repeatedly ask about that topic and acquire all the dialog during the same conversation (kinda defeats the purpose). <_<

Obviously a good idea; implementation would be a lot of work but it'd be fun to play with =)

I think it would be interesting if you could implement things like time of day or even time of the month or year into things...

I really like this idea. Though, if done must be done correctly. A lot of imigination and creativity coming up unique dialogue for each npc. It will take a lot of time to do this if you were thinking about doing this. I can tell you....one person isn't going to do this on their own. Who ever is going to do this you must take into account race, six, trade, and faction(if any) into consideration for each individual NPC. Also, looking at the same dialogue from the npc of what they said about the topic already and kind of meshing it with that to make it some what similar to that so if you were click on the topic again they wouldn't say something off the wall compared to the previous or first time you talked to that npc about the topic. It has to be in character is what i'm trying to say. You can group certain people together to make it shorter to like all commoners would say this and all nobles would say this then all tradesmen would say this and each faction group would say that.

should be easy, just need to have a global that randomizes during menumode, so that the responses can change during the same conversation.

I prefer a mixture of chatty and terse characters. Voluble scholars and laconic scouts etc.
1 thing I did like. If you ask them about their race most members of a given race say exactly the same thing. Khajit are an exception to that, seeming to select randomly from half a dozen different possible answers. I wish a bit more variety like that had been in the vanilla game.

This is a great idea! And it's also a gigantic work...
Should you venture into this one, keep in mind a couple of things.
First, dialogue must be treated with care, because it's incredibly easy to create hidden conflicts with it, especially if you modify the stock MW/TB/BM topics.
Second, it should be LGNPC compatible.

Second the seconded.

You could probably have it so that asking about services gives you a dialogue choice for each of the different locations or service types (like asking town guards for directions in Oblivion, for example).

THIS, good god, this.

Always drove me nuts how I couldn't ask for who/what I was looking for.

The ironic part is it is labeled "SPECIFIC place/person/service" but you are never given the choice to actually BE specific.

It's like, why I can't I go and ask for a trader, or if I'm hurt ask for a healer, or let's say, I am looking for Fargoth and ask one of the townsfolk about him spefically through "specific person" 'till I find someone who knows where he is.

Sounds great to me. Just don't forget to insert different people's personalities into HOW they say things. An ancient Telvanni sorcerer would probably speak much differently than a young Imperial scout, even if they're talking about the same thing.

Thanks, gang! I'm glad to see so much interest and so many great comments and suggestions.

My main intent (at the moment) in asking this question is that I'm planning to do a series of around 30 mods in the theme "The Traveller's Guide to Dining". In the first one, I created a waitress character and I wanted her to be able to give details about the meals. It seemed silly to have the new stuff be detailed and the standard topics be, well, standard, so I had her do a lot of the standard topics kind of in the new way I'm proposing.

In the future, I want each character that I work on to have a more complete, individual personality. Some might be cheerful and friendly, some might be terse, some might be cranky or sarcastic. I'm interested in variety.

I'm not planning on changing tons of characters at this point. As you know, that would be a monumental task. But I figure, if I'm going to be doing dialogue for some NPC, I might as well do the best job I can, and little by little all the personalities will emerge. It appears that people are generally favorable toward this idea, so I'm going to go with it.

And yes, I'll make sure that what I do works with LGNPC as best as it can.

Cheers!

This is wonderful news, as I love any and all mods that increase dialogue.

A small question though, would some of the dialogue be able to be generated over time, such as the type that happens with Calvia, Gatanas, and other companions where they offer new things to say after time has been spent? I do not know how complex this would be, but I loved the interaction with the Calvia mod where every two days or so, she offered a new topic. Or as in Gatanas' case, offering a "much to discuss" as time and things transpired. If only all companions and NPC's were this way.

That is also why LGNPC is a dream come true for the game at large. It took some things, like the skeleton in the Adammasartus(sp) cave and made a very touching mini-quest which was excellent. The more interactive and interesting dialogue, the better!

I wish much modding success to you Debi, this was something many of us wanted for quite some time.

Generating dialogue over time, though requiring a great attention to detail, is possible, as you've seen with your companions. As long as I can attach a script to an NPC, keeping track of time is possible, and local variables can be used as conditions on dialogue info/response.

I'll keep this in mind while I'm working on my next mod.

This is practically my mission statement when creating new characters for mods. I think focusing on the characters relative to your mod is definitely the way to go. Your Traveller's Guide to Dining just keeps getting better and better, and I really look forward to it.

Thank you, Stuporstar. I think I have almost as much fun creating mods as I do playing the game. It's kind of like playing part of the game in my head while I'm working on one. I'm doing more research for my next mod now. I only hope I can implement all of my ideas without taking the rest of eternity and that I actually create something interesting and fun. Comments and wishes from others are highly appreciated and I take everything everyone says seriously (even when I may choose not to do something).

Happy gaming!

Either way is fine, as long as it has some flow, and is interesting. Otherwise I just get click happy, then I'm like what did he say...