In obilvion, speechcraft and disposition (like or dislike) seemed to be combined. On a realism perspective, speechcraft and disposition are rather separate, though related, aspects of persuasion. In Oblivion, raising someone's disposition improves speechcraft, and high speechcraft helps with raising disposition. However, persuasion is solely based on disposition. In my opinion, disposition should aim to speechcraft, yet to make someone like you just by joking/taunting/flirting.. or whatever, isn't very realistic.

I think a better way to implement disposition and speechcraft is this:
1. disposition of an NPC is determined by what you have done for/to the NPC, what you said to the NPC, your reputation with the NPC's community, your fame/infamy, and maybe some bribing as well.
2. speechcraft skill is increased by talking to NPC's. Sounds boring but that's how it works in real life - you practice talking. For example, every time you go through a fresh topic (like in Oblivion, the one in bright golden color) in a conversation, you receive a few XP for speechcraft.
3. to utilize speechcraft, we can let the player gain access to new topics when the combined value of speechcraft and disposition is above a threshold. And some perks too.
4. do you remember in oblivion there are a lot of (I mean, a lot of) quests that involve having to play the speech minigame and raise the disposition to a certain point before you can move on? not very creative way to implement quests, I think. There should be alternate paths to take rather than persuasion.

Let me be the first to say that this is a great idea. The whole speechcraft minigame was a joke. I really like the idea of speechcraft being directly related to how many topics you have hit. Many people will say that is stupid or too realistic, but I think it actually makes a lot of sense. I want to have a silver tongue born of experience, not from minigame manipulation. AWESOME

On the other hand, conversation is the most common way to get someone to like you more. Which is sort of what Oblivion tried and failed to do...

Honestly, anything is better than the Speechcraft minigame. That's the only thing in Oblivion that I can see I straight-up hated. I never did it. I bribed my way to max disposition all the time, just because playing a minigame in the middle of conversation with someone where you tell jokes, taunt them, and flatter them is the biggest break of immersion I've ever seen in the series.

Your idea is good, though honestly I can say I'd have max speechcraft as soon as possible, as I imagine most people would. I always pick every conversation topic possible.

I think speechcraft should be like acrobatic and athelet skills, which you can't really quickly get to high level until maybe level 30 or so. or maybe 20 for people who are very active with talking to npc, and 50 for people who dont like to talk. I think this fits into skyrim's new skill system very well.

I hope Speechcraft is one of the skills they took out. Bloody useless skill (useless in game, very usefull in real life).

Some good ideas here. I like the thought of getting better at speechraft the more topics you've discovered. Perhaps instead of the topics just giving you skill points, you could use them. For example, someone tells you about "Dwemer Ruins", and that could be added to your speechcraft list. Then in conversation with anyone you could tell them about Dwemer ruins, and it could increase or decrease disposition based how the topic matches the NPC's personality; maybe it's +1 for mages and scouts who'd be interested in that kind of thing.

I hope they take out Mercantile, which punished you no matter where you took it as a skill.

I can imagine a whole lot of "I don't find that interesting" or "Can we talk about something else?" voice recording.

Im sure that stupid minigame is gone, but I do hope there are ways to make people like you without just doing stupid fetch-quests for them.

Yeah Oblivion's was awful - know this NPC likes jokes but I'm forced to coerce, admire, and boast to him regardless.

I think the devs intended to simulate a carefully crafted conversation where there's some degree of each, but depends on which one you want to emphasize...

I think I'm one of the only people that actually enjoyed that minigame. I know it made no sense but I had fun with it. It also caused me to level up mostly through speechcraft for the first few levels I got, making the game VERY difficult for my first 15 levels or so. I don't remember how high in level I got before leaving the Imperial City, but I maxed out the disposition of just about every character in the city after starting the game. Because my first several hours after getting out of prison were spent exploring the city and talking to everyone I suspect that minigame is getting nostalgic feelings out of me that it really doesn't deserve.

See, here is the problem with Mini Games. You were able to max out the disposition of everyone in a major town at real low character levels. That should never happen. You should find maybe one or two NPCs that you can talk up and the rest will see you as an uneducated slod until you have gained some levels and skills. With a Minigame, none of that matters.

Speechcraft should be an enhancement to your reputation which should be an ehancement to the disposition. If any one of those is high or low, then they can have a larger impact on the equation. However while you can talk them into a better disposition, up to a point, your deeds and actions have the most influence on that.

Yea being able to max out with the minigame is unbalanced. With my suggestion in the OP, you can tweak it so that you have to discover, say, 1000 topics to max out speechcraft, then at the beginning imperial city you can only probably find 200 topics. As the game progresses you'll be able to find more topics either in other towns or through quests. That way it'll be more like acrobatic skill, where you have to spend a lot of time jumping around.

I like OP's suggestion for a more hidden Speechcraft system, as I don't think Morrowind or Oblivion handled this quite right.

I agree with the previous comment about Oblivion's minigame system providing an easy way to charm NPC's at a very low level, and an easier way to anger players who are at a high level. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's annoying; but it's never realistic. That being said, I recently started playing Morrowind again and I can't seem to get into the swing of Speechcraft. It's so random, and the only way I can interact with the NPC to superficially influence it for the better is take a random stab at 'admire' and hope it works (which it usually doesn't).

I agree that making appropriate choices in conversation and exhausting new dialogue options should lead to a higher speech skill for the player, but that would make it easy to level up in the beginning and harder later on. In the beginning of the game, all topics are open. As time progresses those conversation topics become exhausted and you need to find new ways to enhance your Speechcraft. I also like the idea of learning new topics of conversation and carrying them into other conversations with other players (like in Morrowind). This wasn't practical in Oblivion because it would have required a great deal more dialogue, but the previous suggestion about putting in a line similar to "I don't know anything about that," or "Let's talk about something else..." would be easy to record and use as a placeholder for topics that were irrelevant to any particular NPC.

So how would Bethesda make the system fluid from level 1 to level... 50+? There would have to be dialogue options available that would have a pass/fail chance that don't irreparably damage dialogue with that character and are not specific to a particular NPC, level, region or quest-line. Something like, "How are you doing?" could trigger a short (3-5 interaction) dialogue that would involve some chance and some skill on the player's part. It wouldn't be a mini-game, but it would involve chance and could possibly influence an NPC's disposition toward you for the better. These 3-5 interactions could have several lines of recorded dialogue that switch out so that most interactions are not the same.

I'm not so confident in this answer yet. Thoughts?

I see Speechcraft as something that should have a gradual effect with each meeting, as well as the possibility of forcing favors or information in the short run at the expense of long-term disposition. Their initial disposition would be based on your Personality what they know of you (not the psychic system where everyone knows that you're a member of 2 guilds, did a favor for someone in another town, and accidentally stole an empty mug in some remote village). Each conversation, their opinion could be swayed by a small amount, depending on your Speechcraft skill versus theirs, and depending on what you choose to reveal about yourself. Specific topics could have a Speechcraft check, modified by current disposition, to see if they'll discuss it with you, but would incur a Disposition penalty. You could either gather the information by successfully talking them into it with Speechcraft, or by gradually building up the trust needed to increase Dispostion above the required threshold.

It seems Random but it is not. And, Telvanni Bug Musk always helps.

They have to like you enough for Speech Challenges to work. If their disposition is at 30 or 40, it is very easy to make it go lower with an Admire. Like Taunting, sometimes I would Bribe them up to 90 or 100 then Taunt them to attacking me. Sometimes I had to bribe them up a couple of times. However in Morrowind, unless your Speechcraft is pretty high, like over 60, Taunts and Admires are not always successful. Then again, this is the way it should be.

Oh, and don't worry about the Bribes, you can get them back from the corpse.

I've played Morrowind enough to know that nothing in the entire game could truly be considered 'random.' I have used Bug Musk once or twice on my current save file for important encounters, but I never feel like bribing is the right choice. I experiment with the admire skill (read: button mash) on unimportant characters such as guards until I feel comfortable enough trying it on a normal citizen. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but it's a better system for me than wasting 10-1000 gold. Yes, I'm that greedy. That's why my character steals napkins. :disguise:


edit:

Oh yeah, and to help make my comment more relevant to the thread: button mashing and repeating silly mini-games ad nauseum are not what I call fun or inspired gameplay. It should be interactive, intuitive, and with enough variation to allow the player to try different strategies each time. That is something I feel is missing from speechcraft in Oblivion--strategy. :/