Agree with your sentiment (and with that of the thread in general), but I'm not sure I get the anology. Or, rather, I think speechcraft as in Morrowind and Oblivion were already similar to a battle. In a battle, you need to attack a few times, block a few times, cast some spells, drink some potions, etc. and then you kill or get killed. In a conversation, it's not that you persuade only once to get what you want (well, you might, but this is also the case in a battle), but you might need to do this multiple times. That is, in order to get the desired result out of an NPC (information on a quest, getting an item, etc.) you might need to raise their disposition to a suitably high level; but that might take a number of rounds in the persuasion game.

Yeah it was more like that in those games. Maybe to take the anology a little further, instead of just you "attacking" by boasting, intimidating etc., the NPC would also be doing it back to you and you'd have to choose a proper response. And you could get better jokes, admires and such as your skill increases, or maybe by learning them from books or other NPCs.

It was more the Fallout approach that I would prefer to avoid, which had speech checks which were a dialogue option with a % chance to succeed, and if it fails there's no alternative besides giving up or reloading. (At least in Fallout 3. I haven't played NV yet so I don't know if its different there).

Definitely the fallout one by miles and miles no question or doubt about that.

Ok, I think I get the point now: what you'd like to see in conversations is (i) a bit more back and forth (like in a battle, it's not just you doing all the attacking) where you need to adjust your conversational tactics on the fly depending on what the NPC is doing, but also (ii) to make sure that blunders can be forgiven - if you make a bad move, you can always dig yourself out of a hole with some sweet talking or whatever.

I guess the issue is working out a mechanism for that...

In place on an opinion, I offer my review of three TES games and two Fallout games to provide an overall picture.

Daggerfall: Speechcraft skills, while interesting for the flavor, were of minimal importance. However, the ability to flavor your remarks was actually pretty cool. Lesson learned: make speech actually seem to do something.

Morrowind: Speech is reworked to Admire, Taunt, Intimidate, and Bribe. Speech now affects a like/dislike meter. The skill itself is entirely bland and colorless, and the lines you get as responses are repetitive and lack context. Imagining what you might have said leads to situations where your character is probably saying something you don't envision them saying. Lessons learned: Money buys love. You can kill anyone you want to, as long as you taunt them into a fury first.

Oblivion: System reworked again, essentially flattery, intimidation, joke, boast, and bribe. Speech is now performed through a rotating wheel that the puzzle-adept ace, regardless of speech skill. Lessons learned: bribery is more effective than ever. It's also a waste of money if you're good at wedge management.

Fallout 3: Speech is actually useful, but so rarely that the only reason to take it is for fun. It now gives you odds at success, and you succeed or fail based on the roll of a die. There is NOTHING you can do to try to tip the odds, except booze up or something to improve charisma. Lesson learned: speech can be useful. Save before talking.

New Vegas: Speech is now more useful than: Guns, Energy Weapons, Medical, Repair, lockpicking, Science, and any skills I might have missed. Unless you are willing to accept outcomes that are less than what you want constantly, you will Tag this skill. It is the skill of the gods. Lesson learned: It's possible to make speech TOO useful.

Of course, I always wondered why there's just one joke in Oblivion, yet I'm cracking jokes 15 times in a row to make a shopkeeper like me.
If I could search for the ancient Chimer book of humor and get new jokes, I'd do it... and so would a lot of other people...

Did you play with any mods? I do, and my game is UNENDING. I have never finished the main quest...and have been playing regularly since day 1...

Yes it did make sense. You quickly check out the NPCs facial expressions on each of the quadrants and then quickly decide how best to pick the angry expression when that quadrant wasn't filled and the smiling facial expression when the quadrant was filled, use the one rotate option as needed. Also, it is best to try to end the convo going big on the most favorable [big smile] expression for maximum effect.


Just one more thing:

How do you keep a blonde busy for hours?

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Surely I can't be the only one here who despises that god awful cheese wheel for dialogue, can I?

What I hate most about that stupid wheel is that you are forced to do all four types of dialogue with the NPC. I mean really, do you talk to someone in real life by going "lovely shoes. I'm going to kick your butt. Why did the chicken cross the road? You're just flat out ugly, wanna fight?" I mean really, for the love of the Nine, ditch that ridiculous wheel thing altogether and come up with something 100% new. Screw Fallout's system too. Morrowind had a good system but give us a new system for dialogue. No more insipid cheese wheels for Vaermina's sake!

I would rather have a crazy goat kick me repeatedly in the face than have oblivion speech system back.

anything else would be great.

lol

u made tea come out from my nose....ouch

personally i like the speech wheel but probly cus i was great at it. even so, i still agree that the speech system needs to be changed. AND actually become useful.
sorta the same problem with the lockpick game. i could open very hard locks with 1 pick at min starting security skill. which is great for someone like me who is quick with eye thumb coordination. but lots of peeps who play TES would much rather rely on char skill. so lets be fare to the rpg fan in all of us and redo both these systems.

Sonds to me like you guys just wanna play fallout. :fallout:

I do agree though, the speechcraft wheel in Oblivion was difficult to use. Fallout's was simple and straightforward.

I wonder if there is some way for them to incorporate a topic menu like Morrowind, and a better conversation system like Mass Effect.

Maybe topics to talk about can be selected from a list like Morrowind, or maybe even better Daggerfall style. Once the topic has been asked about a conversation is started about it and you talk in a similar way to Mass Effect, or Alpha Protocol. The options you have in this conversation are based on your speech-craft skill. At a low skill all of the responses you can have are non-probing basic replies which don’t extend the conversation much at all or effect the speaker well, while once you have a high level your responses dig deep into the speakers knowledge and keeps them speaking while interesting them and making them like you more.

Is that a little too adventurous?

I would love a speechcraft skill that you could directly see affecting the conversation, allowing conversations to go on longer and to allow you as the player feel as though you are digging through the NPC's knowledge.

I hated Oblivion's speech wheel so much that I'd rather have Morrowind's dice roll system back even though it was far from perfect. As others have said, having to do all four options on the wheel makes absolutely no RP sense. But I also don't see how the FO3/FONV system could work in TES, given that in Fallout you choose to put points in speech whereas in TES it's increased by practice, you need to be able to try it out on every NPC, just the same as you can punch any NPC if you want to - it needs to have that level of freedom.

I'd have preferred clicking on the persuade option in Oblivion to have taken you to another set of dialogue lines (to keep it in the flow of dialogue rather than the immersion breaking and senseless wheel) with a randomly selected (from a large pool of options) joke, threat, etc... and an option for "here you go my good man..." (bribe x amount of gold) with success or failure for each option dependent upon NPC's demeanour (so as in Oblivion some NPCs will prefer jokes over flattery and so on), how much s/he already likes you (including faction status), PC's speech skill vs. NPC's speech skill, and possibly a random dice roll element (to emulate whether the NPC might have had a row with his wife at breakfast, or found a coin on his way to work, affecting his mood that day independent of the player). You could select as few or as many of the dialogue options as you wished, but each could only be used once per certain number of hours with that NPC (or no skill increase for subsequent attempts with the same option within a certain period of time), to prevent the very tempting option of grinding for skillpoints on one NPC.

That's just off the top of my head and I've put approximately 10 minutes thought into it so I am sure there are flaws in it, but I am hopeful that with some careful consideration Bethesda have come up with something better for Skyrim....

More like Fallout's, but I would rather it be more about how the conversation plays out rather than individual lines.

I would like to see speechcraft evolve even further than in Fallout. What I wonder though is if the barter skill will be lost and become a part of speechcraft... there seems to be a condensing trend with the games when it comes to skills.

Im hoping for a return of the court appearances which would really test your speechcraft depending on how bad of a crime you commited and if you plead guilty or not.

Fallout system would be good but it doesn't fit the levelling system used in TES :/

I liked the concepts behind Morrowind's system -> there is benefit to both raising and lowering someone's opinion of you

I'd like to keep that sentiment, being able to provoke and manipulate people could make for some great quest outcomes.... Unfortuneately, I don't think that speech is ever going to be that useful in a TES game because the levelling system requires repetitive use to get better at the skill and I don't see how you can put enough opportunities for use in without it getting bland unless of course they got rid of voiced dialogue (allows them to viably add in a lot more dialogue) but that's never going to happen.

Maybe Beth will surprise me though, I'd lopve to see them take this idea further - in Oblivion, if people liked you enough they would attack guards to aid you if you resisted arrest... I would love to be able to take towns over in the name of one of the Nord factions by persuading the populace to revolt Or negotiate my way out of fights with creatures I could communicate with - would also make the yield feature more useful.

Daggerfall's dialogue system was great. Just the responses were lame because they were randomly generated; "Sure, the last time I checked the the The Prancing Pony was just the South of here if I'm not mistaken. You'll find it The northeast." god, it was terrible. But the concept and idea was fantastic; the ability to talk to an NPC etiquettely, normally or bluntly. Add that in with the ability to admire or flirt, intimidate, taunt, reason, apologize, joke options, you could have an amazing dialogue system if done right. But most importantly, you should be able to exit the conversation at anytime and not have to do every single style of speech, and have the option to reuse the same manner of speech over and over, like in Daggerfall & Morrowind!

Man, I really liked the way it was done in Oblivion. If anything, it was bad in Morrowind.

It would not be able to work like Fallout with the leveling system that the Elder Scrolls uses. How would you improve?

Fallout New Vegas definitely has the best speech system to date, you would not want to play through the game without taking high speech. The only problem is that you know you are getting bad outcomes if you don't have high speech, it becomes more of a must than an additional skill.

If you see a speech option with a skill requirement you instantly know that is the right choice. The game should instead of showing you which is the right choice with the speech marker it should just give you additional options to choose from without indicating which is only available due to some skill.

the way speechcraft was done in O was so empty / superficial that we could have NO dialog sys at all, just say "this is a fighting game, swords speak eloquently".

I agree with merging speechcraft and mercantile. Finally they would be worth having as a skill. What's the point in speechcraft when you can achieve the same thing and much more with illusion (And you only needed 1 second spells because time froze)?

Girl: Hi there!
You: *COERCE* *BOAST* *INTIMIDATE* *JOKE*
Girl: Um. Okay then.
You: *INTIMIDATE* *JOKE* *BOAST* *COERCE*
Girl: I have to go over there now...

F3 system was better, but overall I still feel it is a bad system, even if your extremely talented at speechcraft a 95% chance of success will still mean that you have a 5% chance of failing completely, this is too simple, once you get good enough at speechcraft, at some point you reach a level where you simply don't have a chance of failing completely against a gullible person, it will simply be a matter of having great success or simply succeeding.



What? Don't you like realism? I always talk to girls like that