IMO, one of the worst ideas of current open world games is the pre-captured voice acting that the current games require, it is like pre-captured graphic clips that you show to players to react to his actions, as opposed to a rendered character by the graphic accelerators.

It *SEVERELY* limits the openness of the reactions that an NPC can give us.

Imagine a game where there is a fully procedurally generated voice synthesis engine, or even no voiced dialog, where all your actions would be responded intelligently by NPCs, for instance when you asked a direction from an NPC, an engine could calculate the actual path to the target and another convert it to actual words, and another one convert that to voice, and you could be responded like this:

"Follow this valley until you reach a bridge to the other bank of the river, then pass the bridge and turn left toward the woods, and follow the path till you reach a tavern named, "The Round Tables", and then ask the manager for more directions."

And I can even think of algorithms for all the parts of that equation.

All the quests could pick the most suitable [i]available[/] NPC in the surrounding area for a specific role depending of the quest role criteria, and that NPC would deliver its specific text without any need to limit the text to save time and space for the saved dialog voices.

All the quests could be a lot more dynamic, bypass the problems caused by killed or otherwise unavailable NPCs, or items a lot better, and have dynamic rewards most suitable for the current situation, without the need to think about that before hand, and anything could be a lot more versatile and dynamic than current frozen affair of the quests and AI.

The voiced dialogs is so blindingly limiting now that you would not imagine and believe what a revolution of quest and AI development would happen, if we can break free of its heavy shackles.

It was IMHO one of the worst things that could happen to the open world genre of the games. If not "THE* worst thing.


I want to lend my a$$ to the debate and say that I do not remember *NO* problem with *ANY* direction given by Morrowind quest givers, and I really enjoyed the sense of detective exploration in that game.


It brought to life, a lot of cyborgs with exact the same voice for them, which in some situations changed between two different sentences. Yeah, right.


Just like Movies can not capture the flow of emotion that could pass a character of a book, as the writer writes them down, the voiced dialogs can not reflect them as well. The movies at least have live characters, that are a lot better at delivering the emotions in their faces.


KOTOR was not an open world RPG, but TES games are, and frozen fixed saved dialogs are the worst thing that has happened to the genre.


And I want a form of passable voice synthesis that would not limit the game development as severely as voice acting.



Morrowind was the best example of limited voice acting, and game the feel of a voiced world without limiting the quests in the least.

But I would suggest a step further and reach for voice synthesis, although a better implementation than the old technologies, and those would surely come and I hope soon.

By the way, in an argument, if you start to try to demean your opponent, it shows that you are lacking in the argumentation skills, or you want to fill the gaps on your arguments.

They should make a option to enable or disable it in the options menu.

I voted aye, because i believe that making them optional wouldnt be as taking them off entirely.
Why? because if its "optional" the game would probably still have the quest marker in mind and you wont be able to get good directions from people, if any at all.

Yes to quest markers. They are good and often needed. Many people use them and like them. They save a lot of time and are easy to ignore if one doesn't need directions.

They already confirmed NPCs give directions so I think optional is the obvious answer here.

+1.

That's one of the things that sux about vanilla Oblivion, you can't turn the compass (which holds the quest marker direction) off. For this reason, I've had to place a piece of electrical tape over the compass on my TV screen!

I'm neutral on this one. I loved Morrowind's directions that really had you think to find the location, and even when finding the location you'd often get lost and come across a few new interesting sights. With Oblivion because everything was voiced they couldn't really include the in-depth directions of Morrowind, for better or for worse. Instead, they opted to hold your hand to where the location was, eliminating the need to explore. This was annoying for dungeons or locations, but very important when you needed to find a wandering NPC... without quest markers you could look around for hours for someone in the Imperial City without finding them because they were in a tavern, wandering around, etc.

Personally I hope that quest markers don't make it into Skyrim, but voice acting is already confirmed, I at least hope you will be able to ask random NPCs for locations, similar to the old school CPRGs. Having the ability to ask NPCs the Where is ______, where you can type in the answer can be a fantastic implementation I think. For example:

You have a quest to deliver something from town X to town Y to a random NPC. You get to town Y and talk to the nearest NPC to get more information - you ask them where is ______ and you type in person Y's name (I think Daggerfall had something similar but can't recall). They can either tell you:

* the standard "I'm not sure about that" (this can apply when asking for anything the NPC won't know about, whether it is a dungeon that is too far away, or gibberish.
* Depending on how detailed they want to get, I think it would be easiest to have them say something generic that can apply "You should try west/north/east/south of here", "I think I saw him/her at the pub/smithy/their house".

I'm not sure if I explained that too well, but hopefully you get the gist - this could be a good middle ground for players that want to play with quest markers and those who prefer to do the exploration by themselves

We survived without quest markers in Morrowind, sooo why not ? And its more fun and a more challenge without quest markers.

I love how in Morrowind, when an NPC gives you a quest, they will give u directions like "Down the street and to your left", and not just pointing things out exactly where they are on your map. It means I have actually go exploring and thats part of the fun.

That's a silly thing to say. You know as well as I do, that the whole modern culture has been going that way - news is all in "soundbites"; Twitter has people speaking in a handful of words; any forum thread on many popular game forums that's longer that three sentences is replied to with "TL;DR" (Too Long, Didn't Read); way too many kids are diagnosed (many incorrectly,but still) with ADD; book, magazine, and newspaper readership is down across the board.....

...yeah, this forum is seemingly more tolerant of longer reads. But that is atypical of society as a whole.


Honestly, the push to Voice Acting everything is what cut down the amount of text in games. An unvoiced game can and will have more text than a voiced game. Just the way it is. (The voice files take vastly more space than text files; plus more voice = more budget devoted to VA salaries.)


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My feeling -

I didn't have any problem with the quest markers in Oblivion. They didn't "ruin exploration" any more than Fast Travel did - when I wanted to explore I explored.... I wandered the countryside looking for what's over the next hill, what was behind that tree, etc. Questing =/= exploring - exploring, to me, doesn't have a set objective like questing does ("Go there, do this, come back").

If they removed quest markers, they'd need to vastly improve given directions.

Something in between would probably be a better idea - quest markers lead you to general locations (the entrance of a cave or ruin, the correct building or district to find an NPC at, etc), but not specifically to the target.

Or, of course, the "turn off quest markers" option in the menu. People who want it can use it, people who enjoy wasting their time can skip it.

I'm neutral on this, It doesn't matter to me if the markers are in or out I'll still play regardless and it won't affect my gameplay.

First off people are fighting over which game was best is pointless. Cause morrowind and oblivion was made with an outdated engines that the paid royalities to use from other compainess. Skyrim is going be using their own made engine.

Second I been reading all over the web on many other sites about this matter. It looks like they understand the hardcoe fans that been playing sence arena did not like the markers cause it made oblivion easy mod.

So from what I have read. Your rep Honor/Infimess will play a big role in the new Radiant AI system. Even more so is how much the quest giver likes you. so better polish up your speach skills. Cause it will determ how much info the quest giver will give you.

Which makes sence. If someone hates you. Why would they give you alot of info. I am sure the info is not ownly the direction to get to the quest object/person. I am sure they will give you info on monsters and traps you can find in their quest. So no Markers from what I understand. They are keeping the compass just so you can tell which way is north with out having to open the map.

FYI people morrowind had very good quest. Problem is you just did not want to read. Please do not be complaining to the devs to put in a marker cause your lazy. Go play WoW if you do not want to read. This is an RPG and markers kill the role play for quest. Quest markers in a rpg is like god mod in a single player FPS.

Really who says that morrowind direction was bad?

I played Morrowind when i was 14 years old, and i found no problems in follwing npc directions! Also i played the game in english and i'm italian and english teaching in italy svcks!

One word: "OPTIONAL" ! (will make it satisfactory for all of us)

Right.
Well, maybe you can 'pull a better number out of your ass' ?

Morrowind instructions were accurate and precise and there were virtually none that were not correct.
Or maybe you can come up with more examples than the two 'I pulled out of my ass'?

Also: many a Morrowind quest giver went: 'Here, let me mark it on your map.'

I dont know what you mean about Daggerfall. It has no directions at all. None.
It goes: You need to go to [random cave] and be back in [random time].
When you didnt know the place yet, it was marked on your map.
Then you typed in the name of the place on your map and you could fast travel there.
Some quests you had to write down the name of the place, as for some reason your quest log wouldnt state it. And all the placenames were semi random built from common building blocks such as -ash -wood -croft -place.. etc so you could very well be looking for 'the ruins of old ashwoodcroft', wich sounded a lot like a million other placenames such as
'old ashwoodcroftplace farm.' So if you hadnt written it down you were screwed.
I dont know what you mean by 'directions relative to place' unless you are talking about in the actual towns themselves.

Morrowind directions relied on landmarks. 'Go east from the camp until you see a cairn by the beach. The Urshilaku burial caverns are directly south from there.'
Couldnt be easier.

You've gotta be kidding...


You ARE joking! Nobody in their fair mind would say something [censored] as that!

How does voice acting hold back the game? ALL the text are pre-written. Even in Dwarf Fortress, a game that creates a random world with random games have pre-written text other than the names!

And text having a bigger effect than voice? Not true at all. Yes it can remove bad voice acting, but there are so many things text just cannot bring over. How does this character sound like? What kind of accent he's using? What kind of subtle emotions you can hear in his voice? Text can't tell you this other way than outright saying it in your face "This man speaks in a really sad tone" Jeez, I think he might be sad... SHOW DON'T TELL!

Hell, we might as well remove graphics too, you can always imagine things much better than it is shown on your monitor. You'll actually see big crowds and no people will walk into the wall! BRILLIANT!




Back on the topic, I don't think this exchange will go anywhere else than before.
We should have quest markers, but it should show a more general area, it should be toggle-able and the characters should give better directions. That way everybody's happy...

True, but precapture voice acting will however ensure that the existing openess will the true quality of a actual responce with real emotion and the likes, until we get good enough tech for computer generated voice, it cannot offer the same quality as a human.

A simple none descriptive direction would be fine though, as long as npcs can give you a direction relative to their position, you don't really need much else, it would also be more realistic if you are asking for another npc, given the guy can't possibly know where a person is at all given times, really the best possible way of finding npcs, is if the directions lead to their home, where it is ensured that they're gonna be at least at some point.



It would seem that Skyrim is already gonna have this, dynamic rewards, and such.



Up until now there really isn't any rpg which have utilized non voiced dialog in order to gain these supposed unimaginable heights. There's also more than one way of conveying information, the problem with text dialog lies in that it is speech, and if speech is not voiced, it is a break in immersion. But you don't have to convey every scrap of information through speech. The dark brotherhood questline in Oblivion is a good example of using ingame letters to give the player the information they need, without breaking immersion through unvoiced dialog.



Key difference here is that you say you don't remember, which leaves open the possibility that you have forgotten or not encountered them. as opposed to stating it as matter of factly, which makes a huge difference.

EDIT: Also, please do not associate exploration with tracking. to explore, is to go without goal, into the wilderness, just to see what's around the next corner.



This is a problem with the games search and assigning dialog for a character. This is a problem with Oblivion and not voiced dialog in general. And still full voiced dialog brought the game more alive than Morrowind, which by the way, had the exact same voice diversity, nobody has a problem with that though, because that's morrowind.



Of course a movie can capture emotion as in a book, better given that is more realistic, if you mean capture flow of emotion passing through a character in a book, then actually they can, you know when someone is angry just by hearing them, and it would also be weird to know the exact emotions unless you are that person, a book has the advantage of being 3rd person, unless they are first person, and will describe it as you would have experienced it through voice, only not as good as had it been voiced.



I disagree, show me a rpg which actually utilizes what you say, because you can't lose something which you haven't had to begin with.



No problem with that unless it's not of the same quality, and if it's not of the same quality, lord have mercy it better utilize all the advantages you claim it will gain.



You cannot be serious. Arcanum, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment. Surely all of these show better use of limited voice acting.



As long as speech is spoken, I really don't care that much.

I agree, you act like I was unprovoked.

I would argue the exact opposite.
When you read a book you fill in all those things yourself. Because they come from your own imagination they are naturally better suited to what you want than anything someone else can do.
There is a reason books are always better than the movie.
I prefer the Gandalf I have built in my mind a thousand times over the Gandalf in the film, even though the man is an accomplished actor.
But he is not my Gandalf.
He doesnt talk or look the way I imagined him to, even though the film and book version often use the same text.
He is a worse Gandalf because he cannot possibly live up to the standards I hold him to.
Accent, inflexion, emphasis all these things I made for him in my mind for the book version, and thats not even a consciouss process. It happens on its own. And because all these things come from my imagination they make for a more 'perfect' depiction of Gandalf.

This is the downside of voice acting.
Characters using the 'wrong' tone or accent or emphasis.
Because it is another persons interpretation of how it should sound like, and not my own.

Okay, I can see the problem now...

That's just not true. Not one medium is any better than the other.
Written literature tend to be better at showing what the characters thinking, and it's better in overall abstract things. Movies are audio-visual medium, it can show things that are hard or impossible to tell in text.

The experience can also be completely different. A book can tell you in several pages how magnificent a building would look, and you would imagine it, but a movie can show it to you, giving you different feelings about and it can also show details you otherwise couldn't imagine.


That's probably because it was that "another person" who created the world and character, not you.

Another thing is imagination is always limited by the persons experience with the world. Like if you never heard a german accent, you wouldn't know how it would sound like.
You could always say, that your interpretation of that character is better, but the author can always say that's not what his/her character is supposed to be...

No, there is another 'filter'.
Yes, another person created an NPC, just like another person created Gandalf.
But when I read LOTR there is only one filter, that between Tolkien's mind and my own.
When talking to Mazoga the Orc there are two filters. The writer, the actor, and me.
The actors interpretation might differ from what I would imagine to be the ideal representation of the text.
(I dont mean Mazoga herself, she is one of my favorites and therefore comes to my mind when I think of an NPC.
But there are bad ones in Oblivion.)

While it is true that movies and books are different media with different strengths, I was talking specifically about a book translated to a movie. In wich case I have yet to see a single one thats better than the book.
A case of adding an extra 'filter' again.

Text by the nature of the medium leaves in blanks in things such as tone, inflexion, emphasis.
I still hold that because your mind automatically fills these in as suited to your personal taste, it 'paints a better picture'
and the end result is more 'immersive' than someone elses interpretation of the same text.

what is this, a competition to you? who can bring the best imaginary number up?



I've already explained how being correct does not change a thing, if someone was looking for you, and I told them to check out planet earth, this would be accurate, correct, but bad directions.

But how about this one:

Like the quest for hostile mudcrabs, it tells you to leave ald ruhn on the west side and take the road towards Gnisis, but you haven't been to Gnisis, and Gnisis isn't a topic she can talk about, and there's no road sign showing you the way to gnisis. Then it talks about what you need to do when you get into the hills, but Morrowind is entirely made up of hills, so this is like say, "when you start to walk on dirt", so not only can't you take the road to Gnisis, because you don't know what road that is, and you can't ask the person who apparently knows about the way to Gnisis, but assuming you did take the road to Gnisis, your supposed to reach some hills before continuing with the rest of the directions, which tells you [censored] about when to continue, because your surrounded by elevations that can be classified as hills.

So what you have left is that the farm in trouble is due west, so you walk west, but you don't know for how long, you just walk west, and hope you'll walk over it, which is highly unlikely, because you can't walk in a straight direction because of the landscape.



Which was fine.



I am talking about the actual towns, in the towns you got directions relative to where you are from the citizens.



Actually it could be easier, it could be marked. I mean if you have a map, and stands in front of someone who clearly knows where it is, and wants you to find it, then why would you not have him mark it, and why would he not be able to, really, who would knowingly walk out into a dangerous place, without knowing exactly where to go before going out, and who would let someone go there, if it was vital to you that they got there, without marking it on their map, since you clearly have the knowledge, and your employee clearly has a map. Not necessarily associated with the Urshilaku burial caverns. Had Morrowind been real life, nobody would have gotten lost, because you would always have made sure to know exactly where to go on your map, because your map is your reference when your out in the wild.

Yes, good point.
There were many cases where the quest giver didnt know exactly where you should go, just the general area.
In that case they could have put a little circle on your map.
And in cases like the burial caverns there is indeed no reason why the Ashkan couldnt have revealed the exact location on your map.
Id like these features, no need for a magic compass.

But that doesnt depreciate that Morrowind directions for the most part were clear and accurate.
Youre the one who started this about 'making stuff up'
I havent really replied to it yet.
But I suggest that if you wish to contest my number you could a ) ask how I arrived at that conclusion, and you should b ) provide an alternative number otherwise youre just blowing hot air.

The example you provided is vacuus. I never had any problem deciding what the hills were because they were obviously hills demarkating one area from the next and it was equally obvious I had to navigate the path through them.
I never had any problem finding the guar lady who was troubled by hostile mudcrabs, the mudcrabs, or the bandits of her follow-up quest.
The road to Gnisis is a ) clearly marked by sign posts and b ) clearly shown on the map that came with the game.

quest markers are for people who cant read

id like 20-30% of quests not marked i remember them old morrowind days searching through my log book

Thank you, that would be nice.



Still need the magic map though.



It's a misrepresentation of the situation, you make it sound like they are the only ones that there are problems with, which is untrue. As I've shown being accurate doesn't mean anything. I do have another quest that has bad directions, but it is saved by a map marker, so it wasn't a problem, I just thought it was funny that what you write in your journal is not the info you get from the savant. You're resting everything on the the fact that on a technical level it can be considered accurate.



Okay, so your preknowledge of what was considered a hill in morrowind saved the day, How was this obvious hills? At what height is something considered a hill, is a hill a specific colour? How steep is something before it is considered a hill, and when is it too steep to be considered a hill? And finally, do all these factors apply in morrowind as well? what a hill in morrowind, as opposed to the real world. And how does this change the fact that there was no road sign showing the road to gnisis from ald ruhn?



I got no map with the game, and your personal experience of the directions are irrelevant.

a) No there isn't, there's no road sign showing the road to gnisis west of ald ruhn, which is where you start the quest. Not only isn't there a sign for gnisis, but when the the road first splits, there's not even a sign post, you have to walk down one path a few steps before a signpost shows up, showing the way to ald ruhn, were you came from, buckmoth fort, and maar gan. Nothing. Else. Your happy to search the west side of ald ruhn all you want, at least I wont be alone in wasting my time.

b ) No map came with the game, was used. I would have loved to have that map, unfortunately it wasn't the map in the game.