New Vegas did speech perfectly. Learn a few things from Obsidian, Bethesda.

Finally a topic with the majority actually exchanging opinions rather than just defending Skyrim no matter what. The fog of hype is finally clearing. :celebration:

On that note, I gotta ask the non-sycophantic-losers-Beth-worshippers: how's the fact that dialogue doesn't stop time working for you guys? I have to say it felt like an interesting idea when I read about it but, after playing, it just seems idiotic. This talk about "realism" is way overrated, if not badly implemented in this case. Since time doesn't stop (but you're locked in the dialogue), I've found myself in numerous situations when 3-5 dialogues (in Hold squares for example) were going as I was talking with a certain NPC. Some of them were even the trigger for a Miscellaneous Objective, and because I was paying attention to my dialogue, I found myself with a new objective without any context to it whatsoever.

Sound in a game comes from a bidimensional speaker, there's no such thing as depth or direction as in real life, just higher/lower volume. Frankly it feels completely counter-immersive for me. Not to mention that NPCs that bumps into you and ramdom-phrase something silly in the middle of major plot dialogues is absolutely disgusting. The Jarl's kids were talking about pies and clothes and teasing in the middle of a forebodding moment, when the guard tells about a dragon being sighted. What killed me is that the dialogue was actually getting me in the mood for the game.

What they call "realism" is neither here nor there. I can understand that given the limitation of TES game engine (one-on-one time-locked dialogue versus more than 2 people in real time) makes it for a limited array of options. But, in this case, I'd rather they didn't change it just for the sake of saying it's "something new".

Except values should be hidden.

That's an unfortunate new method added to the recent Fallouts'. The previous games handled it more appropriately, via weighted percentile.

** Perhaps Skyrim can be modded to emulate Fallout (1)'s speech behavior.

Do you really like being able to have a chance of keeping somebody from destroying 'impure' humanity with a speech skill of 10?

IMO Yes. (A 10% chance. The explanation for this makes great sense, but its long.)

Wouldn't you at least try - and so far my speech skill has failed me with convincing thieves not to attack me so I doubt that example you give will happen, though it is 10% - ? Most people would.....If not then don't click it.

You missed my point entirely. Why IN THE HELL would somebody with the frontal lobe capacity of a cave rat have a chance of convincing anybody of anything? Its like saying political debates are based around chance, its [censored] ridiculous.

I'm not familiar with the Fallout way of doing conversation, but I feel that Skyrim's way could be better. Its too few options, and the ones that are there doesn't do much imo.

As of the real time conversation I feel its working well. I enjoy hearing the chittpvssyr of other NPC in the background, but then again, I haven't encounterd your trubbles with objectives popping up during conversation with other npc's.

First of all, I didn't miss your point. Second of all, every character you create in Skyrim is going to be intelligent, as with dialogue you can't say otherwise, so that's invalid. Like I said....want your character to be a [censored] don't choose the option. I like having it however so It shouldn't be taken away from me.

I just like that you don't know if you're high level enough to succeed a speech test anymore. It feels more natural that way.

Could be several reasons... Could be the guy they talk to has a splitting headache and says, "fine, now get out."; or pities the PC; or they are themselves equally limited, and understand him just fine. . In all weighted percentage based skill checks, the roll reflects probability. It might be a slim one, but still possible ~just not very likely. I once (aged 6) spun the dial on a locked combination lock back and forth a couple times and unlocked it ~Hows that for a 1% chance.

If done correctly, percentile penalties can indeed make an action impossible when the chance drops below zero. Fallout 2's skills went to 300% (Meaning theoretically, a very skilled PC might be skilled enough to succeed at a task with a -60% penalty.)

Unless they took the time to make several different possibilities for each quest, resulting in thousands more lines of dialogue that all would have to be voice acted, then... meh. I haven't played NW but I seriously doubt it's on the same kind of scope as Skyrim. If Skyrim shrunk down the amount of quests very significantly, it could branch out the quests more for the speech skill. But other than that it will remain a mostly useless skill tree imo, with its main benefit getting some extra gold.

I don't mind that so much as I mind that passing it doesn't do anything,

Not to tread on peoples opinions here but you all do understand that despite Bethesda involvement in New Vegas it was developed by Obsidian right? A studio that's done one of the Kotors, the Neverwinter series, etc. Basically they're pretty well known for those types of dialogue trees. Bethesda did do Fallout 3 but by all accounts the New Vegas system was a noted improvement... so again you have to recognize it was something that Obsidian is known for and does well.

There's no reason to expect Bethesda couldn't have cannibalized the system and done their own take on it, I think just overall its' not something they're necessarily good at... or rather an expansive dialogue tree is not something that has ever been on the agenda during their games' development process.