Both Beth and Bioware have definitely lost the edge on how effective their dialogue is at altering the outcome of events. Especially in DA: Inquisition (with the exception of a few key moments), dialogue was basically there to allow you to role-play an attitude without really affecting how the conversation would end. It was a long way off from the way Mass Effect 1's dialogue would open up whole new avenues of gameplay. (My favorite moment was in one of the side-quests to confront a politician that had taken a ship hostage. I managed to infiltrate the ship, bust open his door, talk him down by agreeing to support his treaty, and place him under arrest without firing a shot! It also got me access to a new trader or something later in the game after I passed his treaty.)

The thing Bioware does well is capture the nuances of the player characters responses without filling the screen with text. It's a result of writers that really know what they're doing. Take the following lines as example "responses" for an in-game dialogue (what the player character would actually say:

1.) "I'd like to know a little bit more about things first, before I agree to anything..." [Continues dialogue.]

2.) "Do I look like I'm even considering it? I'm already counting to five in my head. Get lost." [Ends dialogue, rejects quest, negative relation adjustment.]

3.) "I'm not sure I want any part of this. We can talk again, later." [Ends dialogue, pauses quest for now.]

4.) "You need to find someone else. Sorry." [Ends dialogue, rejects quest.]

Bethesda's "wheel options" would likely be something like:

1.) Not sure.

2.) You kidding?

3.) Uncertain.

4.) Not interested.

How the @#$%! do you know what you're actually answering -- especially between 1.) and 3.)?

Bioware would be something like:

1.) A few questions...

2.) Get lost. Now.

3.) Later, perhaps.

4.) Sorry, no.

Crystal clear, in about as many words. Tone is also captured in the wording. The system is sound, but it does require writers that understand the nuances of the written word. Granted, it's not like ALL of the dialogue in FO4 is problematic, some of it is perfectly clear. There were just too many times when I picked something to get more info -- only to have my character accept a quest outright or start talking like a bone-headed bruiser spoiling for blood.

Worse -- I work in education and media...

This already exist I think higher damage for .50 is an obvious one.

The weapon mod system is also an good handle for mods changing caliber for minigun is one who makes sense, the 3 barrel minigun looks like an bug.

new weapons like the obvious better assault rifle will has to use weapon mods too.

Same with armor.

Don't realy see the issue with weapon and game mods both beeing called mods, exception might be people using weapon mods from mods and other don't understand how they got the effect.

Your overplaying modders. Being a modder and programmer myself. Most of the mods I see are really quite simple.


Ussually the complicated ones are guffy. The community doesn't fix anything just tweeks to their preference. One of which preference that you agree with. But someone like me might think that mod ruins the game. So yea it's just to make it more personal to you. Nothing on bethesdas part. They simply don't or any other company have the time to suit EVERYONES preferences

Yes, well said, game companies like Bethesda can never satisfy everyone, even the modding community can't, but its nice to have a forum like this whereby the dislikers can come and "let it out of their system"... in other words - vent!

I foundhttp://www.wired.com/2015/11/fallout-4-bugs over at wired very interesting as to why Bethesda's games are buggy even after official and "unofficial" patches.

1-4 are your opinions, so fair enough!

But 5 -- that's not even a valid comparison. The game allowed players to craft 3 weapons (all swords) at pre-determined points in the game using a scripted sequence of interactive forges. It was a very cool aesthetic! Loved the game, too. But it's apples and oranges. This is not even remotely the same mechanic as the crafting in Beth's games. Their system might simply be menu-based, but their are tens-of-thousands of possible items you can create as opposed to Dark Messiah's...three.

If you're talking about creating more interactive crafting -- actually having to swing the blacksmith's hammer or take apart a gun piece-by-piece to add a new barrel or something, you're discussing a mini-game, not a crafting system. I think it would be cool for a game that offered more linear and limited options. Doing that for FO4 would get really old really fast.

It might work better for an Elder-Scrolls game, though. Actually having to swing and hit the right areas, manage the proper "glow" of your metals, and the results of the final piece would be determined by how well you actually played the mini-game. It would better than having to make 278 pairs of iron gauntlets -- that's for sure!

Elder Scrolls should totally not have a crafting minigame, but that's my opinion. I do think they need to rethink crafting so that it's less grindy, and that may involve separating crafting from the learn-by-use system, which is a topic for the TES Speculation threads.

But what I adore about Fallout 4's crafting is it's simplicity. Other games have "deep" crafting by cluttering the system with useless items in-between the base components and the end result, like clay > bricks > brick blocks in Minecraft, or wheat > flour > dough > bread in another game, where every component up to the bread exists solely to be crafted into the next step in the chain and eventually become bread. But with Fallout, all of the junk items you collect can be broken down into base components to build anything. You could use parts from that Desk Fan to upgrade your weapons, your armor, build artillery at your base, whatever. I love it.

One of the advantages Elder Scrolls has over Fallout in crafting is with alchemy and enchanting. Alchemy's really great in Skyrim, since you learn new recipes through trial and error or reading in-game texts instead of having perks unlock them. And enchanting works similarly, where you learn enchantments by disenchanting items instead of taking a perk to learn them. But unlocking recipes via perks worked really well in Fallout, and I don't think anything's missing per se.

The community doesn't fix anything? What about the Unofficial patches? Long after Bethesda stops supporting a game, the community picks up the slack and supports it. Morrowind, a 12 year old game, had a new Unofficial bug patch a few weeks ago. This work is being done selflessly by modders for the fans of the games.

There's no such thing as 'overplaying modders'.

I do believe that Kingdom Come is doing that to a certain extent at least when it comes to alchemy.

I don't know, I'm rather enjoying the ambient music in Fallout 4 more then skyrim's

New Vegas still has the best dialog of any Fallout game, but I'll still take Fallout 4's voiced protagonist and dialog menu over Fallout 3's. And definitely over the dialog in any Elder Scrolls game, where it's always been more about collecting information than simulating natural conversation or letting you express your personality. If we're talking about the "Bethesda Way", the dialog is definitely the biggest paradigm shift, but I think Bethesda needs to move forward with it instead of back off and go back to an older system.

And for the record, New Vegas's model of skill and attribute checks in dialog could have easily been replicated with Fallout 4's perk chart. Hell, I bet they could do it with a voiced protagonist too.

Yes, the Bethesda options are downright confusing, this is why I call the full dialogue mod an patch, it affects game play directly many times, option 2 is very unclear here.

I still don't see the issue of showing the full text? its actually important to know the different options if you try to do it immersive and rolleplay.

Many of the options are just where to pad the list up to 4, and its only 4, again notice that nobody complains about the lack of background information about quests in the quest list as its not more.

Yes they also changed it from one sentence in Skyrim up too two.

Voiced actor helps in making it feels more like an natural dialogue, however the only good deep ones is with followers. However they put an lot of work into it and its very static.

And yes it pretty much require the full dialogue patch or its just feel stupid, it also help a lot role playing as you know that you will say.

For most quests even the main quest it feels more like listen to monologues then select yes. And you have to listen to the information first as its not available later.

As an BoS knight it feel natural for me to accept an rutine assignment from my commander and then ask questions about it.

Things get far worse then you run into situations where you get multiple quests related to an npc as the system can not handle it with 4 static options.

Again my idea of using the loot menu for dialogue would solve most issues, it would keep the dynamic dialogue of Falout 4, allow more text on screen up to multiple lines if needed and it would allow an dynamic number of options from 2 and up, had been no problems running new vegas dialoge on it but here to would be some scrolling,

They could've, quite easily aswell. Unfornately they morphed the Skyrim conversation system into something Bioware like. Atleast just a few checks, on par with Fallout 3 to let us know they remembered that it is a Fallout game. Still it doesn't really bother me that much. I love exploring the world and learning all the small secrets and stories that make it whole. Just like i do with Elder Scrolls etc. I get why people dislike it though, and why it ruins the experience for them. That does svck indeed.

I was actually thinking of the "simpler" ones in particular. Things that add user interfaces designed for PCs, weapon and armor balancing, fixing interface nonsense (like the mouse not working for dialogue in Skyrim). Most especially -- the Unofficial Patch teams and the insane levels of work they do and continue to do for nothing.

As far as uber-mods go, like gameplay overhauls or sixy, chainmail bikinis to highlight the new hentai hairstyles... No. I don't care for those either. (But that's what the Creation Kit is for, and I think it's extremely awesome that Bethesda provides them free-of-charge!) I'm pretty purist when it comes to playing the games, myself. I think Beth has a pretty awesome visual design that creates a cohesive visual style for their games, and they usually balance their gameplay very well. It's when someone needs to develop a "script extender", then four other modders team up to fix memory address issues so the game will run reliably on 64-bit systems with more than 4 GB of RAM...that's utterly ridiculous. Or when quests that were reported broken on day 1 of release are finally fixed by the community three months later, but Beth never addresses them. These modders actually finish developing the games -- thousands of man hours in total.

I appreciate Bethesda and everything they create. And I appreciate all of the modders that pour their free time into these fixes. I simply feel that the company has come to rely on modders in the community getting their games to deliver what was promised. I should not have to use a mod to get by a main quest mission, or have my mouse work correctly in dialogue, or ensure textures load properly when I enter a new area. I do hope that Bethesda and Zenimax at least offer gratitude to these individuals when they find them.

That's cool! One of my favorite things ever in a game was mixing potions in Lego Harry Potter.

I agree with most of what you said OP, I wish the dialogue system was better too.....

One thing I do LOVE are the companions, I really think they are fantastic characters and really make the world more alive for me. I agree their combat AI needs improving, but the characters themselves are excellent.

Love FO4, hope they can continue to improve it

Good thread OP! Well balanced thoughts between love and hate. Something we all understand in Beth games. Especially Skyrim...

My only complaint with companions is that if I tell them to wait and an enemy suddenly appears and engages them in battle, the companions stand there like a morons and refuse to fight back. If somebody shot me in the back with a mini gun you bet I would react! Please fix Beth!

And going back on the engine debate- remember Beth uses the 'shoes on the roof' as the standard for all engines. So if you cannot remove a item from your character and throw the loose item onto the roof of a building then the engine is no good for Beth's needs. And that is why Beth does not acquire the rights for another engine and just tinkers with this one!

Except the engine Bethesda is using for Fallout 4 is an upgraded version of the creation engine skyrim used which is an upgraded form of Gamebryo which Bethesda acquired the rights to use as well as to expand on. Creation Engine is being used because it's familiar to modders, makes modding the game easier and allows them to do what they want to do as well as process the vast amounts of items, interiors and the world space. Is it perfect? No but then again none of the engines that can do what games like Fallout 4 can do are perfect and at least they're upgrading it and improving on it.

sure it's a bit of a Frankenstein's Monster kind of deal where they're just adding and repairing stuff but that's pretty much what all engines are doing instead of just scrapping everything and starting over again.

Thanks!

On the engine debate, I can fully understand why Beth does not want to build a brand new engine from scratch. Plus, there really isn't anything wrong with this one -- it works really well. It's just that they don't fine-tune it. The community has basically done that for PC users since Morrowind, and it does run relatively flawlessly once modders balance the LOD, optimize meshes and textures, and fix memory issues. So, it can be done, but Beth doesn't do it. It's not even a console vs. PC issue, as the same bugs usually appear on all platforms.

I'm not sure either, other than they wanted to try things the Bioware way by selecting an idea, but still being treated to surprising dialogue from your own character like you were watching a cutscene. (Plus, the way Bethesda has done it, it may have been to save lot's and lots of time during development. It seems they simply created a bunch of stock phrases like "Uncertain" or "Not sure" then tried to write dialogue to fit those same ideas for every situation.) If it were up to me, I would have suggested using images rather than words: Fallout Boy shaking his head no, extending his hand for more money, making a sarcastic face, threatening with an angry fist, etc. That at least would have made the reaction your were choosing clear.)

I'm actually quite torn on whether I like the cinematic approach of surprising voiced dialogue or the more intimate approach of actual lines with a silent character better. I don't really mind having my character voiced, but I wish the personality could have been selected in advance, perhaps. You could have chosen gruff, kind, maniacal, sarcastic or whatever during creation. That would have been fun work for actors, too! Here's a list lines, and here's a list of attitudes. We would like a reading of each line done according to each attitude. That's pretty challenging, and it's a chance to practice / show off your range!

I noticed that too, but it didn't make me chuckle, but sad.... Players want some good RPG and this is the response they usually get from developers or marketing department...

I think that is the reason why lego Harry Potter was success and some other lego MMO was not. My conclusion is that it is not about having a game with lego or some other popular features (what I can see as a trend in some companies), but the small funny details.

So I believe RPG title can be successful, if it is good (not like some ppl tend to claim), because I think generally players like good games, they don't care so much about genre.

In my opinion, they're spelled "criticize" and "people". Just my opinion.

I think the way the Minuteman faction works was brilliantly played. I never got the feeling that being suddenly called "General" was something that makes the player character swell with pride and a sense of accomplishment -- it something that should make them roll their eyes or wave their arms in frustration. It's a pipe dream -- that you then have to struggle to turn into a reality. Mission after mission later, you suddenly begin to realize...hey...this...this might work! Only then does General start to feel like it means something. This is pretty good development. The flare gun is a nice touch as well.