Agreed. It's a useless mechanic when you can just bribe them and get better results.

I gotta say, the persuasion system wasn't good for what it was intended but it definitely could've been used elsewhere. It's an interesting timed puzzle mechanic. There has to be a redoing of it though. In Morrowind it was even worse.

Would be nice if speechcraft and disposition were just beefed up all together. The system was pretty lame in both Morrowind and Oblivion.

Would be nice if a person's disposition would go up and down depending on what type of person you appear to be, and dependent on what you are wearing. Each piece of armor/clothing could have a (or multiple) category/ies that gauges it as lavish, crude, or modest based on how much it costs, and each person in the game could have a similar classification that defines what sort of person/people they like (once again, they can have multiple). The player's strength and endurance would add a multiplier effect to crude apparel (intimidation value), the players personality (along with it's normal disposition multipliers) would add a multiplier to fancy apparel since it makes you look handsome/beautiful/dignified, and the players Willpower would multiply their "modest" effect. Infamy would be considered crude, and fame would be considered lavish; so infamy to crude people would raise their disposition, and fame to lavish people would raise their disposition.

So for instance, if you have a lot of fame, and were wearing ebony heavy armor (very lavish) and were to walk up to an obnoxious beggar (he only likes crude people) naturally he'd like you less from the start and your speechcraft attempts would probably just piss him off; he'd reply with stuff like "Who do you think you are" and "So you think you are better than me?" On the other hand, if you try to intimidate and rough him up, he'd be more susceptible to that since you "look" like you are better than him Now, if you were to walk up to that beggar wearing cheap leather armor, and you had a lot of infamy, he'd like you since you'd come off as a crude/lowbrow person. Any speechcraft attempts would likely go quite well since you appear to have stuff in common, but intimidation would likely have less effect since he'd become upset since he thought you liked him and he thought you were friends.

If you were to walk up to some snobby "better than thou" rich person wearing rags on yourself and you had a lot of infamy, naturally this high roller would dislike you from the start, and would despise any small talk you try to make with him. He'd say stuff like "Don't spew your filth at me" or "I don't converse with thugs." But since you are crude and thuggish in appearance, intimidation would work quite well on him.

Of course, there would be some people that have two or three favored personality types. For instance, a scumbag and corrupt rich person who likes both lavish personas and thugs, and then there could be lower middle class (crude and modest) and upper middle class (modest and lavish) who will like you depending on what type of person you come off as.

TL;DR:
NPC's disposition and the success of speechcraft/intimidation/bribery would be based on how they see you, and certain character attributes, and what you are wearing modifies the chances of certain things working on them depending on what kind of company they like to have around. A snobby rich person would like to have other pretty-faced high rollers converse with them, so expensive clothing, strong personality and heroic tales of grandeur would make them like you. A scumbag street merchant will like tough lowbrow company around him and will like to hear tales of your misdeeds, and will like people wearing crude clothing or armor. Modest people will be equally susceptible to both the extremes, but will have best relations with people who come off to them as normal/middle class and strong-willed. Then there are "hybrid" type people who will like multiple personality types. rather than a lame--ass minigame, there'd just be a few speechcraft options like: Intimidate, Tale of Fame, Tale of Infamy, Converse, and Bribe, and depending on what type of stuff the NPC likes certain things will work much better than others.


Also, this time there should probably be a limit to how much you can speechcraft somebody in one sitting. it doesn't make much sense that you can bribe somebody like 50 times in a row, or admire them like 20 times.

It was bad and in need of an overhaul, I agree...as bad as the psychic guards though? Stop right there criminal scum! Nobody tells a lie on my watch! :flamethrower:

While it had flaws, there should still be a speechcraft system in place. I would rather it be improved than removed.

Suggest a substite that isn't entirely controlled by dice-rolls, please.

EDIt: OK, how about Dragon Age's system? An NPC says something to you and then you have several responses. Based on your response, the NPC's disposition may rise, drop, or stay the same. A high Speechcraft skill opens up better respones and hides the worst ones. The persuasion minigame gets replaced by 2-4 such questions and responses (the NPC may stop the converstion prematurely if they get insulted, or continue it if they are very interested in what you have to say). Only problem is that it would take a lot of work and voice acting in order to make it unrepetetive.

There is nothing wrong with the mini-game itself but they should of mix up what the npc like or/and hide the expressions of that npc you are dealing with. The npc you are dealing with he/she will not like your joke in one round but on the other they like it and next after that they don't. I like the graph part of it where you press.

That on Morrowind oh My GOD!!!! That is hard enough. In the Legion guild quest 'Slander' that is very painful that my character in that game has a low skill for it. Least I loot the 8000 gold of from him. That scum!!!!

That in Fallout New Vegas is good and useful.

First time I hear of this glith but I've always been very aware that the minigame is crap.

Same it never made sense. Why would you taunt, compliment, threaten, and joke with someone in one conversation?
I either bribed them or used the charm spell the Imperials had.

My hope would be that in Skyrim you gain additional dialogue options depending on your speech skill. Only they aren't marked as speech skill options so you atill have to think about what you're saying rather than just selecting the speech option. The disposition raising minigame was...not great.

I thought the persuasion mini game in Oblivion was better than Morrowinds' and they both were terrible.

The problem was not the basic idea of the minigame, I believe. With the idea I mean the concept that you start making small-talk in hope of getting the NPC to like you more, and that one simple ejaculation of admiration is not enough, but that you have to keep going, and that you can ruin what you've accomplished so far in the process.

I think that's a good idea that could work. The problem was that two of the available options were actually not things you'd say in order to make someone like you. They should have made three distinct minigames with different goals: Taunting to make them hate you, intimidating to shortly increase their talkativeness, and admiring/joking to increase their disposition permanently.

Let's take the admiration minigame as an example. There are different ways to get someone to like you, and these should be the choices here, with their success entirely dependent on the NPC. Your challenge would be to find the correct ones, and instead of having to use all of the choices once, you should then be allowed to focus on those ones. However, your Speechcraft skill determines how often you can use one type of admiration before you run out of ideas in that area (e.g. you only know a certain amount of jokes). And perhaps you have to mix it up a bit if you don't want to bore the NPC with the same topic all the time.

If there's a persuasion system in Skyrim, that's what I'd like to see. But I'd also like to see disposition based on the quests you do, or even a Fallout-like system without any disposition meter, as long as Speechcraft does have a strong influence on your interactions somehow.

Exactly, Morrowind system suffer from bribing and Oblivion system does not fix it and even make it even more horrible with thats minigame, system from Fallout NV is much better in implementation of dialogue.

The game was grossly stupid. Who the hell boats, intimidates, tells a joke and then compliment someone in the same conversation!!!!!

UGH THIS GAME MADE ME SO ANGRY.

Persuasion shouldn't be a mini game... it should be represented by a wide range of options in game for how to effictively persuade someone.

1. Doing Quests ... someone won't help you? Volunteer to help them. (Let Radiant Story generate a on-the-fly quest) ... you only get one chance to succeed. If you fail the quest, their disposition lowers, otherwise if successful they think more highly of you.

2. Bribes ... giving bribes should be more helpful, having a much smaller chance of being turned down than in our real world today. In the past, people were often always struggling every day with lack of provision, lack of income, and the taking of bribes was more rampant than it is today. But the cost of giving a bribe should go up. It's all about the cost, not about success or fail. If you want ot bribe someone, it's pretty much gonna work, but can YOU really afford to part with that gold yourself? If not, you'd better try some other options first and leave bribery for last.

3. Favors ... this would require that the game have a system for allow you, the PC, give favors to NPC's. Say one man wants to be seen with the town's Mayor. Since you're Dragonborn, and since you're friends with the Mayor, you can try to go and get the Mayor to meet the guy. If he agrees, then the man can meet him. Then you've given the man a favor. Now he "owes" you ... so his disposition will pretty much be at 100 after this. But doing favors requires more work, more negotiating... and you may even have to offer a favor in advance (to be repaid later) to the Mayor in this example for him to agree to do this. Now he will want to collect on that favor from you at some point, and you might not like what he asks you to do. If you don't do the favor, you've broken your word, and your Trusworthiness (a factor inside of Disposition) goes down. So people won't be as likely to say yes to "favors" or other things if you can't be "trusted" ...

4. Leverage ... you find out something potentially life ruining about someone and threaten to expose this information if they don't "comply" with your request. Leverage is just about the best persuasion there is in gaining the compliance of unlawful individuals (such as legislators, governors, mayors, presidents, etc...) since they all operate soley based on power and authority over and above the law itself in most cases. The only thing that works on the wealthy and powerful is ... leverage, and this is obtained through discovering their secrets. The perfect job for the Stealth category, for assassins, theives, and "operatives" or agents. Break into their big secure mansion, find their secret vault hidden behind the painting, obtain their ledger, crack their ledger's secret code, and figure out their "secrets" which can be used to persuade them to do what you need them to do. Now that's some awesome uses for persuasion, requiring the use of all of your other skills in tandem before you even apply the supreme kinds of pressure this method results in.

... But I was so good at it.

I'd rather just have the Speech checks like in Fallout. I'd like it to be like in Fallout 3 though, where your character could have no idea what they were saying, but still have a chance at succeeding. Have you ever had that happen in real life? It's a great feeling. It would be a lot better than the speech craft minigame.

I really like some of these ideas, here.

I think that if you mixed these options in with some instances of Fallout 3-esque skill-challenges, you'd have a pretty badass system for persuasion.

Cool this topic got so much response. I would prefer a system where the npc's disposition depends on choices you make while talking to him. Whereby characters with low skill in speechcraft will get punished very hard for choosing the wrong options. More skilled player will get less punished and maybe have more options or maybe some kind of systems that allows them to reckognize better which options are good. That makes sense for me because a person with good rhetorical skills should get better out of the situation of telling a joke too a humourless person or threatinig the wrong person.
Also the player skills - ! not the player character skills ! - should be implemented.
The answer-options should be reasonable that means by knowing the npc well you should work out the right answers. Just as an example: If there are maybe for ways too talk to an npc (to be a slimy, to be threatening, to be bragging and to be respectfull) the right choice should be matching the npc. If you try to threaten the heavy-armor orc trader who trains two-handed weapons, he should say something like: "Get the [censored] out of here and if you try that one more time I will wipe the floor with your skinny ass" and then the conversation should break and he murmurs: "I've sliced heavy Trolls with one hand crushed fury mages with the other when you were even born."
His disposition should sink to the same floor which should be wiped with you. I know there are some flaws especially if you lay again and know the right answers already but then it's always easier the second time and I think you get the core idea of my concept.
Would that be cool What do You Think???

I really think Speechcraft in general should get the heave-ho. Instead, disposition should be a function of
1) your dialog choices - with appropriate responses depending on whether you want to go for honest, slimy, dishonest, etc.

This is really obvious, and the heart of any role playing game. I'm trying to do this in my Morrowind mod.

2) your appearance (and more specifically, the delta between you and the NPC)

Same as above, this should be obvious. If you are talking to a duke or duchess dressed like a sewer rat, they should have a lower disposition than if you are dressed like a fellow nobleman. On the flip side, a bum on the street will likely have a different opinion of you dressed as a nobleman than as a commoner. I would even go so far as to say that dressing inappropriately should hold up a quest.

3) your reputation, if you have one.

This should work both ways. Nice people should distrust you if you are a theif/assassin, while Theives guilds should distrust you if you are a goody two-shoes.

4) your memberships.

These should matter. Some people should like you more immediately - others, not so much. Some should even take a swing at you, just because they hate your guild.

Anything else is silly, save perhaps bribes - but even then, bribes shouldn't work they way they do. They should allow you to get specific information, while causing more complex long term affects on disposition. (some NPC's should see you more favorably if they know your purse is loose, while others will generally distrust you)

Frankly, for a role playing game, TES games have been kind of weak in this area. I'm hoping Skyrim improves on it.

I like how Fallout NV handled the speech skill by raising it you got access to different speech options, just as long as the new options are made to be meaningful.
any type of speech mini-game = fail
Speechcraft should affect how your character interacts with NPCs beyond just raising their disposition

I would go it one further, and say that mini-games in general are terrible. It's like you have been svcked out of your regular gaming experience, and deposited inside an 8-bit NES.

I can kind of see them for something technical, like hacking or lockpicking, but for something so critical to role playing as dialog and speech? Um, no. Over all, I'd prefer to not see them at all.

Yeah I did say that but in a nicer way lol

Speechcraft should be just that: a craft. Though I admit that I'm a tad foggy on how to implement that idea satisfactorily. Perhaps you select a subject (e.g. Husband is secretly a spear-wielding Werewolf) and an intonation (e.g. threatening), then your skill-level governs the disposition change in a manner similar to how weapon skill-level governs the damage dealt.

Weird thing is, I think the speechcraft minigame could've worked. If only NPC's only gave you 2 or maybe 3 tries at the wheel, after which they'd get bored of the small talk. And then it would reset after some time (1 day for one round of the minigame). Maybe let it depend on the level difference between you and the NPC too. So if you're trying to become friends with an influential high level person, you'd need several days of small talk to get him to give you a quest, then you'd have to do the quest, and then after some more small talk you'd be friends. Your speechcraft skill would of course help you get more disposition from a single round, so it would save you a lot of time.