So, Fallout 3/NV had a good speech system, but it doesn't really work for Elder Scrolls games because ES games have natural skill progression in which skills are raised by practicing them. If a Fallout speech system was implemented, you wouldn't be able to feasibly practice your speechcraft by passing or failing speech checks as there are only so many speech checks in the game world and you'd have too low a speechcraft skill level to pass most speech checks anyway when you begin the game.

I think a system similar to Morrowind would be the best approach, where NPCs have a disposition bar of 0-100, with 100 being the most an NPC can like you. There are options you can choose freely at any time to attempt to raise the disposition such as admire, intimidate, bribe, etc.

But I still don't think a Morrowind speech system is good enough because it doesn't blend seamlessly into interacting with NPCs.

What are your thoughts on this and how do you think Bethesda is solving (or has solved) this dilemma?

i hated oblivions persuade system, it usually just made the person like me less, so i usually just bribe them. Hopefully the persuade system will be better tho

Both would be swell. As long as the disposition-changing isn't as obtuse as the wheel in Oblivion.
Being able to use speechcraft to incite other effects (rage, fear) or for stealth purposes (blending in with a crowd, disguising as a faction) would be rad chilies also.

Even if they had a disposition system, there still wouldn't be any reason to raise it except to get information, get better deals, or (maybe) taunt someone into attacking. So, why not just do those things directly? Put some skill challenges in the random quests too, so you get an infinite supply.

What do you mean by doing those things directly? Do you mean eliminating the disposition bar but still using the speechcraft tools of admire, intimidation, etc?

who knows? maybe it's on of the skills they removed. and quite frankly, I wouldn't cry it. it was the most useles skill when you get to higher levels, since you always had TONS of money

And that's why speechcraft must be overhauled. If implemented well, it's a skill that will give you opportunities to create some interesting situations in certain quests and go past combat if you so choose.

I'd rather not have a completely RNG-based persuade system like Morrowind or Fallout 3. I'd like another minigame, but something less tedious than Oblivion; and maybe one actually worth trying to level this time as well. Once you got used to it (which took about 5 minutes), Speechcraft was easy to get at least 60 Disposition with an NPC without bribes fresh out of the tutorial dungeon.

I'm just glad that it will have some sort of purpose now that you can't use a one second charm 80 points spell on target to get anything you want (Time no longer freezes when talking to them).

We don't know that for sure, there was a misunderstanding people had from the magazine.

If you played using an Xbox 360 controller you could just cheat that one up. It was lame!


I HATE THE WHEEL!


Oh how I miss taunting someone until they attacked me. It enabled me to be a mass murderer without taking the first shot. I had all but forgotten about taunting in that game! Bethesda, bring back the taunting! Yes, cower beneath my silver tongue and . . . then get really mad and try to kill me with your steel dagger! Yeah! :mohawk:

Given the current wheel system, how about skill affecting the magnitude as a multiplier, based on fame, personality (wherever that goes now), clothing (appearance towards specific groups of people), and all those other contributing factors. But what you can do depends on when perks you have? How much bribery will cost you will also depend on these factors. Increases with level and fame. Bribery will not be an easy way out solution once you start going. Maybe it's time to pick another speechcraft perk, like persuade? Players dilemma.

They said it was natural without zooming in and them continuing about their daily tasks, so I think it's highly unlikely that time still freezes and the rest of the world stops doing things.

That would be so cool. Change clothing around a corner and then when guards ask you where someone went, use a simple minigame to convince them that they went this and that way or whatever and that you are not them.

Something harder than Oblivion disposition game for sure.


Other then that I really am drawing a blank, so good luck.


............I'm looking at you Bethesda. :mellow:

I don't know, but I loved New Vegas. I ALWAYS picked the speech options I was too low in skill for, because it was almost always hilarious.

I would think that the BEST solution is clearly obvious:

Speechcraft is about making small talk, essentially. What is it that we don't really do in Fallout*, Oblivion, Morrowind, etc? TALK. Fallout gives us extra choices of what to say that has a scripted outcome. YAWN. Morrowind has a "click random item of text, which will fail unless you have a skill greater than 40, or chose bribe". Oblivion has a "click named slice of cheese". None of these actually make you feel like you're cleverly choosing the right line to deliver.

So let's try this: develop NPC personalities by giving them tastes, preferences, favorite skills, etc. Let the player make small talk with them. Maybe you compliment Ontus Vanin on his robes. Maybe you ask Bugak gro-Bol what he thinks the best books are. Myabe you debate philosophy with Phintias. The point being: these should be attrib/skill/deed-based options. As my speech increases, first and foremost, I get better reads on what I should/shouldn't say. Second, I get more effect out of good choices. Third, I get access to new speech options.

Numerically, it's really simple. The Lusty Argonian Maid, for example, scores pretty low as an "intellectual topic", but highly as a "bawdy" one. So persons with bawdy interests respond better. Likewise, people who like jokes respond better to jokes, but only on "acceptable" subject matter. Wouldn't be too effective to make a complex magic joke to Amusei. But Archmage Traven might appreciate the levity, despite not being a necessarily mirthful individual.

So... basically, give us an Oblivion-like paradigm, but give us individual LINES to use. Actual threats, jokes, and the like. Score them for content, etc. use the cumulative reaction score to decide how the "victim" reacts.

I think that's way to complex, would be difficult to implement and relies too much on the player and not enough on the skill. I don't want tospend 5 minutes anolysing the charactersw many personality traits to choose an optimised way to increase my disposition. Yawn.

Whatever the minigame becomes, I want to be able just to roll for it, like I do in picking locks.

It was really quite a useless skill all together, because of that and the advent of charm spells. So the only way it wasn't useless is if you were REALLY poor, or didn't have an Illusion skill of 25 in order to create a spell that is Charm 100 for 1 sec on touch.

The only way to make it useful would be to rid the other options available to you. That's why it basically worked in Fallout, because there was no other way around it.

Also, it was either extremely hard to level without training (Morrowind), or extremely easy (Oblivion). So if it is in, I hope they have a way that's properly balanced.

Add more body language, like fallout 3, when you was a strong fella you could get unique dialogue options based on it.Threatening to beath the [censored] out of the ghoul in the saloon in megaton for info comes to mind xD, use this much more in skyrim, make everything your character is good in count for more than just regular dialogue with peoples. Maybe this went a little off topic but, I think it could be nice

Tough question!

This skill requires a lot of thought through out to decide about a decent implementation, if you do not want to go the Fallout direction. :nerd:

I tried for a long time to come up with a better persuasion system. It would have to be practicable (As that is the way you advance the skill.) It would have to make sense. It would have to be fun. I tried several different methods, and each one fell flat.

The subtleties of conversation are difficult to translate to a mere video game.

I like the conversation of Black Isle games, especially if the dialog is written well. Planescape: Torment is a prime example. Naturally, I figured they could just emulate this type of system, like Fallout 3/NV did, Mass Effect, The Witcher, etc. The problem is the way TES skill system works. You learn by doing. In those other games, you could advance your conversational ability simply by selecting that skill to advance when you level up. You don't do this in a TES game, and it doesn't make sense to repeatedly select a dialog option you know is wrong merely for the sake of practice.

I can see what they were going for in Oblivion. You try to read facial expressions to find out what the character will respond to best. It translated into an awful persuasion system, but I feel their pain. This is not a simple problem.

Perhaps a bit of Daggerfall could make it's way in here again. Daggerfall had a list of topics, similar to Morrowind, but you could select whether to speak plainly, roughly, or formally. When addressing nobles, it's best to speak formally, but the rabble on the street responds better to roughly.

Picture this. You select individual dialogs, similar to Fallout or any Black Isle game. But there is a small menu above the dialog options to allow you to set the tone of your response. Each response would change depending on what you select.

Formal:
Greetings my Lady. I am but a weary traveler, and if you would be willing to inform me as to the location of an inn, I would be most appreciative.

Plain:
Good day. You wouldn't happen to know where an inn is, would you?

Rough:
Hey wench. Tell me where the inn is.

Different characters would have different tolerances for improper behavior for their own status. The game would check each attempt at conversation against your persuasion skill to adjust the disposition of the character you are speaking to, so you are, in a way, always in "persuasion mode" if this were Oblivion, but subtle, and you aren't able to make someone go from hating you to loving you with just a few jokes. It takes time to gain someone's trust.

The higher your persuasion skill, the more you are able to influence their disposition in a positive way, and the higher their disposition toward you, the more they are willing to overlook anything you might say wrong. And very high persuasion skills could unlock previously unavailable conversation topics.

So you always have to watch what you say, always, lest you offend someone. And simply speaking to people gives you experience toward persuasion. Repeating things said before with the same person won't influence your persuasion anymore.

For me this would be perfection :goodjob:

Perhaps as a sort of separate stream from the normal speech options there could be a more generic, 'gamey' system, possibly timed. Exchanging insults or threats, complimenting aristocratic ladies, providing the next line in a drunken barroom song, that sort of thing. The important part is that it can be semi-randomized and done repeatedly, unlike Fallout-style pre-written speech checks.
I don't know exactly how it would play out. Maybe choosing options with certain words that match words in their last statement, like insult swordfighting in monkey island?... blah.