Did Bethesda make ANY attempt to make the NPCs react to the

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:30 am

I have a level 30 Orc who hasn't done jack with the main quest. Hasn't touched it. Recently started doing Legion quests and realized the Legionnaires have a funny way of greeting me. "Dragonborn, huh? So was it your mother or father that was the dragon?" No shouts learned. No word walls touched. No dragons slain. Nevertheless, my Orc mercenary is apparently Dragonborn. Why? Because.

So I'm thinking "holy crap that's a disappointingly pathetic amount of effort put into making the game recognize your character," because as anyone who's completed a faction quest chain (or the main quest for that matter) knows, NPCs don't exactly seem aware of your standing. But whatever, shrug it off, keep going about my day. Then while running around, I get attacked by a group of Thalmor agents. I think "wtf??" I'd never seen the Thalmor automatically be aggressive before. These came up as giant red dots and seemed to be coming straight for me. Sure enough, a fight ensues and once I kill them all off wondering why the HELL the Thalmor are attacking a random Orc mercenary, I check their bodies and find a note declaring me to be a MASSIVE THREAT to the Thalmor Dominion that must be executed. MY CHARACTER HAS NEVER INTERACTED WITH THESE GUYS IN HIS LIFE.


Skyrim has a beautiful landscape yes.
There's plenty to do, yes.

But I think Bethesda should be absolutely ashamed of the work that's put into making the world react to your character. AND the length of the faction quests. This isn't the first time it's happened, no. "Ah, you must be the Arcane University's newest recruit" is still fresh in my memory. The thing is though, those same Battlemages also recognized you as Arch-mage. The fact that they'd call you Arch-mage AND the new guy suggested that a dev simply forgot to deactivate the first line once a certain quest stage was met. It suggested that the devs ATTEMPTED to do it right, but made a mistake. This though? With my character automatically being an enemy of the Thalmor and Dragonborn? This is like they just couldn't be flipping bothered to give that event or that line of dialog a trigger. No, clearly making sure random rocky ledge #2467 looks REALLY nice was more important than adding a simple trigger.

At least PRETEND you're trying... :sadvaultboy:


Yes, Bethesda did.
I first learned i was walking around naked - had somehow undressed myself - when an NPC pass a comment along those lines.
Is it enough.

No!

We want moarrr. Todd himself saidit's the hardest thing to do.
User avatar
Dragonz Dancer
 
Posts: 3441
Joined: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:01 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 6:02 pm

Sigh, although Skyrim was an AMAZING game for the most part, people keep creating threads like these that point out the bad parts about Skyrim. It seems as though Betheda needs a much larger team, I'm not sure how many people are working on the project now, but they are going to need many more people to manage the HUGE world of Skyrim. I really hope Bethesda makes some more major changes in the next game... They should try to learn from these threads (not the rage ones), for example, the magic system svcks, how can Bethesda improve that? They have to look at other succesful games, say, "Oh here what i did wrong" and take the time to fix it.
User avatar
Ashley Tamen
 
Posts: 3477
Joined: Sun Apr 08, 2007 6:17 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:05 am

..it's pretty clearly just a snarl in the files somewhere relating to status and greetings. Not some sort of sinister desire on the part of Bethesda to annoy you. Why do people feel the need to blow everything out of proportion?


Just look at the joining date of these complainers..... "joined today" "joined yesturday" They talk talk talk, they should make it better then just to talk....
User avatar
carly mcdonough
 
Posts: 3402
Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:23 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:48 am

I'm sorry but is there a point to this post?

Like seriously. It should be clear what I meant.



You obviously did not read a single word I posted. Otherwise you would see that I agree with you, but I am saying that your title makes no logical sense given the description of your problem. You ask a question, and then describe a different issue.

And your being hyper-defensive about it makes you what, exactly? Right? The winner? Better than me? Cool your jets
User avatar
Lou
 
Posts: 3518
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 6:56 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:08 pm

I just don't like when Arcadia tells me "Maybe a strong nord like you doesn't need a healing potion" when I'm a dark elf...
User avatar
Poetic Vice
 
Posts: 3440
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:19 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 8:52 am

I just don't like when Arcadia tells me "Maybe a strong nord like you doesn't need a healing potion" when I'm a dark elf...



Sarcasm. She has it.
User avatar
Jason King
 
Posts: 3382
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:05 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:55 am

You obviously did not read a single word I posted. Otherwise you would see that I agree with you, but I am saying that your title makes no logical sense given the description of your problem. You ask a question, and then describe a different issue.

And your being hyper-defensive about it makes you what, exactly? Right? The winner? Better than me? Cool your jets



So? Where did I say you didn't agree with me.

I said your post was pointless because all it did was clarify something that everyone could already figure out for themselves. I made that post because I don't like people being anol about things that are so obvious from the get-go; it's just a waste of breathe and a waste of time, as is this conversation we're now having.

So do me a favor and next time I make a post where I say "she is you're mother," please don't bother responding with "STAND BACK EVERYONE WHILE I CLARIFY THAT HE ACTUALLY MEANT TO SAY 'YOUR' INSTEAD OF 'YOU'RE.'" No I didn't, we all caught that already.
User avatar
Nikki Morse
 
Posts: 3494
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:08 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 3:36 am

We pay big bucks, and for those bugs we expect quality. What is stopping me for choosing a different game? In product priority i would drop this in the top 10 simply because it affects gameplay so much.


You paid $60, not "big bucks".

And I haven't noticed any issues with NPCs not knowing my current quest-status in the game, but as mentioned, it's not like this is an intentional glitch. The AI is vastly improved from Oblivion, but if anyone was expecting perfection, you were/are being ridiculous.
User avatar
Lexy Corpsey
 
Posts: 3448
Joined: Tue Jun 27, 2006 12:39 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:47 am

I must be playing a different game, because all the other mages in the college recognise me as Archmage? :confused:
User avatar
Harinder Ghag
 
Posts: 3405
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:26 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 3:32 pm

So? Where did I say you didn't agree with me.

I said your post was pointless because all it did was clarify something that everyone could already figure out for themselves. I made that post because I don't like people being anol about things that are so obvious from the get-go; it's just a waste of breathe and a waste of time, as is this conversation we're now having.

So do me a favor and next time I make a post where I say "she is you're mother," please don't bother responding with "STAND BACK EVERYONE WHILE I CLARIFY THAT HE ACTUALLY MEANT TO SAY 'YOUR' INSTEAD OF 'YOU'RE.'" No I didn't, we all caught that already.



You're kind of a lunatic.
User avatar
Lisa Robb
 
Posts: 3542
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 9:13 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 4:40 pm

Agree completely with the OP.

Other instances are guard comments along the lines of " I see you prefer light armor..." when I'm wearing all heavy armor, or "I see you prefer one-handed weapons like me instead those heavy two-handed ones..." when the guard is wielding a big warhammer. Its piss-poor scripting logic in the AI dialogue selection.

What is particularly annoying is that we saw all this in Oblivion years ago and it should have been fixed. That's why they should be ashamed.
User avatar
Erich Lendermon
 
Posts: 3322
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2007 4:20 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:41 am

They probably were going to make NPCs react appropriately to the PC, but then they realized that this isn't as high priority as finisher moves or 3D models of crap in your inventory.
User avatar
Max Van Morrison
 
Posts: 3503
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:48 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:10 pm

Those are bad, but the one that irks me the most is when I shoot a bandit in the face, run back while I'm still hidden in the shadows, and then after he walks like 15 feet to look for whoever just fractured his skull and pierced his brain with a projectile weapon, he says "ah, I guess it was nothing." as if he thought he heard a skeever running around or something. "Nevermind the arrow sticking out of my head, it was probably just rats!"

the AI is pretty bad.


LOL, that is hilarious.
User avatar
priscillaaa
 
Posts: 3309
Joined: Sat Dec 30, 2006 8:22 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 3:38 pm

Also, how about the Thalmor react to you differently if you're a High Elf, Orc, Nord etc?"


I play a high elf and a Thalmor commented that I should die for being a traitor to my kind.
User avatar
Charlie Ramsden
 
Posts: 3434
Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 7:53 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:53 pm

the fact that NOBODY in the entirety of skyrim reacts to what happens at the end of the dark brotherhood quest really ruins it for me.


I've had various reactions to this, but only to the extent of "ohmygod, the Emperor...is dead! who could've done such a horrible thing?!"
User avatar
steve brewin
 
Posts: 3411
Joined: Thu Jun 21, 2007 7:17 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:39 am

Agree completely with the OP.

Other instances are guard comments along the lines of " I see you prefer light armor..." when I'm wearing all heavy armor, or "I see you prefer one-handed weapons like me instead those heavy two-handed ones..." when the guard is wielding a big warhammer. Its piss-poor scripting logic in the AI dialogue selection.

What is particularly annoying is that we saw all this in Oblivion years ago and it should have been fixed. That's why they should be ashamed.


I'd forgotten about that one.
I've had the same exact thing happen: claymore in my hand, warhammer on his back, then he says I prefer one-handed weapons like him.

They probably were going to make NPCs react appropriately to the PC, but then they realized that this isn't as high priority as finisher moves or 3D models of crap in your inventory.


Thank god we can see that carrot in full 3D HD detail. I remember all the sleepless nights I had in Oblivion because I worried my character was gonna get sick from his potions, seeing as I was never able to inspect the carrots for dirt and grime before using them.
User avatar
Everardo Montano
 
Posts: 3373
Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:23 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:11 pm

wait, what?

Think about what you said for a second:

"Simple solution get rid of lots of the spoken dialogue, there is no way they are ever going to be able to have enough for people like you lot. Have just a greeting or something contextual that is flavour for the character then the rest just text. That way they could have a lot more dialogue, which adds to the game, and they can be more creative with it."


Did you think about this, at all? You are saying that the fact that speech is included is the issue- audible dialogue is the problem. Can you try to explain that please? I mention it because the game still needs to "know" what to show for text instead of audible dialogue. The game will still choose a file to use for interaction with the player. Avoiding the use of audible dialogue doesn't have anything to do with the issue. If text was being displayed, the text would still be the 'wrong' text. Your simple solution doesn't work.

The actual simple solution for the OP's case is to not allow the game to mention 'Dragonborn' until the player does something to merit it, whether text or audible dialogue is used.


Using mostly text means less work and effort, which means more dialogue and options. Audible dialogue is the problem because it will never never be enough, it will never be able to meet the needs of the people. You could provide tons more contextual text dialogue at a fraction of the effort and cost of audible dialogue.
User avatar
Victoria Vasileva
 
Posts: 3340
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2006 5:42 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:29 pm

I have to admit this is one of the things I don't like.

I solved the murders in Winterhelm and everyone keeps talking like they are still happening. Or that murdered people are still alive!

NOT good.

J
User avatar
George PUluse
 
Posts: 3486
Joined: Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:20 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:15 am

Using mostly text means less work and effort, which means more dialogue and options. Audible dialogue is the problem because it will never never be enough, it will never be able to meet the needs of the people. You could provide tons more contextual text dialogue at a fraction of the effort and cost of audible dialogue.


Fallout New Vegas did a better job using voices and they had a shorter development time than Skyrim, and a smaller team too I think. It wasn't impossible for Bethesda to get this right, they just had their priorities elsewhere.
User avatar
Sarah Knight
 
Posts: 3416
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:02 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 11:26 am

Using mostly text means less work and effort, which means more dialogue and options. Audible dialogue is the problem because it will never never be enough, it will never be able to meet the needs of the people. You could provide tons more contextual text dialogue at a fraction of the effort and cost of audible dialogue.



But with text you still have to match the response to the situation. Text in and of itself doesn't fix what you say it does. Now you're tossing in other things like "well it takes less time". Fine, but saving that time still doesn't fix the problem. Likewise less cost doesn't mean anything; the underlying issue was not addressed.

The problem is that they forgot to make sure that the dialogue matched what the player has done or has not done. I'm sorry but your solution doesn't do that.

You're not thinking this through
User avatar
Rebecca Dosch
 
Posts: 3453
Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:39 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 9:43 am

Fallout New Vegas did a better job using voices and they had a shorter development time than Skyrim, and a smaller team too I think. It wasn't impossible for Bethesda to get this right, they just had their priorities elsewhere.



Which I still to this day CANNOT understand....

Fallout New Vegas = 1 year of development, small development team, World Record Holder for most lines of recorded dialog in a video game, tons of consequences and reactions for almost EVERYTHING you do.
Skyrim = 5 years of development, largest development team of any Bethesda game yet, then they took an arrow to the knee and the NPCs struggle to acknowledge anything you've done.

Like wtf did they do during those 5 years? Surely they could've spared one for dialog.

But with text you still have to match the response to the situation. Text in and of itself doesn't fix what you say it does. Now you're tossing in other things like "well it takes less time". Fine, but saving that time still doesn't fix the problem. Likewise less cost doesn't mean anything; the underlying issue was not addressed.

The problem is that they forgot to make sure that the dialogue matched what the player has done or has not done. I'm sorry but your solution doesn't do that.

You're not thinking this through


He's saying that recorded dialog consumes time and space. You have to find voice actors, manage their payroll and recording dates etc, then you have to conserve on what's said because you have limited time and space for what you can record. With written dialog? You skip a ton of steps, you can fit a LOT of text into one MB of space and suddenly you've freed up so much time to write more. Furthermore, "the book was better." There's no reason why text can't be as thoroughly enjoyable as an actor can, since wtf, I'm sure everyone knows "the book was better."
User avatar
dav
 
Posts: 3338
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2007 3:46 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 5:13 am

"I work for Belethor, over at the general goods store."
"I know, you've said that to me approximately 300 times, including 3 times in the last five minutes. I've bought hundreds of items and spent 300,000 gold at the store and you've been there while I did it."
...
"I work for Belethor, over at the general goods store."

The biggest problem here is that they have decided to make NPC talk to you when you haven't asked anything.
This may have sounded nice in theory ("hey, people spontaneously talking with me ! Feels alive !") but it's among these ideas that SOUNDS cool but AREN'T. Because the result is that it feels weird (why is everyone talking to me ?) and more importantly VERY ANNOYING :
- It means constant repetition, which is a pain, as your example shows.
- It's VERY annoying when I'm having an actual conversation with another NPC, or even worse, I'm listening to another conversation between other NPC, and suddendly this random idiot runs into me and cover what I'm paying attention to with his inane blather *repress a urge to slaughter*

Bandits saying "must've been the wind" to an arrow in the face, however, is a long-standing issue that I'm surprised they haven't fixed. Exact same thing that happened in Oblivion. Once an enemy takes damage, they should at least stay on alert status until they find you or they die. Really baffled that this is still happening in Skyrim.

The real bummer is that a game already managed this whole thing TEN YEARS AGO. Yeah; Deus Ex had this same kind of gameplay, and they had a very easy and believable way to deal with it : foes that would see you would have the kind of reaction you speak about. Guys who had started to fight you (or were wounded) were LOOKING FOR YOU, running in circle around the point where they last saw you, and when they "downgraded" their "alertness statut", they would not say "must have been the wind" with a bullet wound open in their chest, but rather "he must have gone now".
Also, they would react to a corpse, while people in TES seems to consider the dead bodies of their friends as a usual scenery pictures.

Just look at the joining date of these complainers..... "joined today" "joined yesturday" They talk talk talk, they should make it better then just to talk....

Yeah, the joining date means a lot more than what someone says !
Though if you really want to play the e-peen contest about the time when people joined, be my guest...
User avatar
Stephanie I
 
Posts: 3357
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 3:28 pm

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 12:17 pm

Well crap.

There goes my mercenary roleplay.


Yeah that's not good to hear... I haven't done the Legion questline yet and was planning on creating a legionairre character who had nothing to do with the main quest or being dragonborn, and had served in the Legion for years before being sent to Skyrim because of the war, but I guess that's out of the window now as well... who thought that was a good idea?
User avatar
Laurenn Doylee
 
Posts: 3427
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:48 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 7:05 am


He's saying that recorded dialog consumes time and space. You have to find voice actors, manage their payroll and recording dates etc, then you have to conserve on what's said because you have limited time and space for what you can record. With written dialog? You skip a ton of steps, you can fit a LOT of text into one MB of space and suddenly you've freed up so much time to write more. Furthermore, "the book was better." There's no reason why text can't be as thoroughly enjoyable as an actor can, since wtf, I'm sure everyone knows "the book was better."


I know what he said. I read his posts.

What you're both ignoring is that the problem is not with the complexity or size restrictions or cost or time investment with text vs. voice acting. Those things all do take time money and effort but they do not address the issue. the problem is not "we spent so much time effort and money on voice acting that we decided to not fix this thing that could have been made better with text dialogue". You might feel that this is the problem, but I'm telling you, on one hand that's your assumption, and on the other, even if it were somehow true, the time money and effort doesn't automatically go to fix any issue at all.

The problem is with design. They forgot to allow the game design to handle a situation in which the player has not "become known as" Dragonborn

Skipping steps doesn't fix the design hole. Using text options doesn't make them realize they made the mistake.
User avatar
Iain Lamb
 
Posts: 3453
Joined: Sat May 19, 2007 4:47 am

Post » Wed Dec 14, 2011 2:03 am

I know what he said. I read his posts.

What you're both ignoring is that the problem is not with the complexity or size restrictions or cost or time investment with text vs. voice acting. Those things all do take time money and effort but they do not address the issue. the problem is not "we spent so much time effort and money on voice acting that we decided to not fix this thing that could have been made better with text dialogue". You might feel that this is the problem, but I'm telling you, on one hand that's your assumption, and on the other, even if it were somehow true, the time money and effort doesn't automatically go to fix any issue at all.

The problem is with design. They forgot to allow the game design to handle a situation in which the player has not "become known as" Dragonborn

Skipping steps doesn't fix the design hole. Using text options doesn't make them realize they made the mistake.



Personally I don't give them the benefit of the doubt that they forgot. I struggle to see how they could forget when Oblivion had such a feature. It's kind of a big feature (that they've included in the past) to just forget.
I'm more of the opinion that for SOME reason (hell if I know why) they stuck this feature on the bottom of the to-do list, and thus it eventually didn't make the cut. If they had more time, it could've, and if we had text dialog, it definitely would've. There are other ways they could've made the cut, sure, but spoken dialog is a common point people pick out, because it really does take quite a lot of space, considering what it does.


- It's VERY annoying when I'm having an actual conversation with another NPC, or even worse, I'm listening to another conversation between other NPC, and suddendly this random idiot runs into me and cover what I'm paying attention to with his inane blather *repress a urge to slaughter*


That's another thing. The most recent line of spoken dialog takes priority, for some reason. Someone could be telling you the secret location of a Daedric artifact and then suddenly it gets cut off (both acoustically and visually) by "I work for Belethor at the general goods store."
User avatar
Cat
 
Posts: 3451
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:10 am

PreviousNext

Return to V - Skyrim