Dialogue as Combat

I've been going back and forth on, not only how to code the dialogue system in my JRPG, but also how to design it. I've tried out a few systems, and I've read countless articles. While I haven't even begun to tinker with the actual implementation, I was hoping to get some thoughts, feedback and any additional ideas people might have.

The idea is to make dialogue as engaging as combat.

Players will use various tactics (aggression, compliment, subterfuge, etc.) which will adjust different traits in the person they're talking to. For instance, you can increase or decrease their Confidence, Conviction, Aggression, etc.) Different NPCs would have varying levels of resistances and weaknesses to different types of interactions.

Different combinations of levels would unlock different dialogue statements.

In addition to this, there would be Keywords (you've likely seen this in other games). Performing the right task, going to the right location, or asking the right questions will unlock Keywords, which would be highlighted in dialogue.

The player would be able to use these keywords to "Ask about" "Request", "Demand" or "Offer" things.

I'm still working out the actual system, as well as the interface. Does anyone have thoughts or suggestions along these lines?

Thanks!

 

I had fiddled with the an idea for dialog that you might like:

You talk to an NPC and then you get the intro followed by a set of conversation trees. Then you pick one of the trees, but what button determines the way you ask it.

When I was thinking about it I had a controller in mind, so:


X (Blue) - Nuetral / Innocuous
Y (Yellow) - Humble / Sucking-Up
A (Green) - Friendly / Humorously
B (Red) - Threatning / Authoritative

Here's what I would see it as:

NPC - "Greetings, player! How are you today?"
1) Where is the castle?
2) Give me your money.
3) Got any quest?

PLAYER - 2A "Moslty good! To be honest, I've had a bit of a time getting some petty cash together for equipment to help out around here. I don't suppose you would want to help me out with that?"

(rolls charisma)

NPC - "Aye, I wish that I could help but I do have mouths to feed at home."
1) Where is the castle?
2) Give me your money.
3) Got any quests?

PLAYER - 2B "Listen, there are many trolls out there that would love to have your heart for dinner and I'm trying to stop that from happening. If you're not going to help out then maybe I should join them and start by cutting your's out right now!"

(rolls player's stats vs NPC's)

NPC - "There's no need for that. Here, let me give you this..."

(+10 gold, -15 reputation)

NPC - "Now, was there anything else then?"
1) Where is the castle?
2) Give me your money.
3) Got any quests?

PLAYER - 1X "Where can I find the castle?"

(rolls reputation)

NPC - "I think you can manage to find it on your own..."
1) Where is the castle?
2) Give me your money.
3) Got any quests?

PLAYER - Quits dialog.

GAURD - "HAULT! Did you just take money from that farmer?"
1) Yes
2) No
3) What farmer?

PLAYER - 3Y "What seems to be the problem officer? A farmer lost some money, you say?"

Etc...

 

This may not be exactly what you have in mind, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution had dialogue on almost equal par with combat. So instead of making dialogue as engaging as combat, some fights could be avoided by choosing the correct order of dialogue choices.

 

Not gonna lie, I immediately started thinking "you fight like a dairy farmer" "how appropriate, you fight like a cow." Probably not the "dialogue as combat" you were thinking of.

Since Mass Effect there haven't been many games that tried making dialogue meaty. Worse yet, they've all stolen the cool dude/douchebag moral dichotomy. Once upon a time, you used to just pickpocket the guy, or straight up whacked the guy and then stole from him; but these days you've got to sit down and have a five course meal with the schmuck to get a penny off him. Right now it just seems like most choice in dialogue is just there to extend a morality system.


The problem with dialogue is you need to pick your battles. Most fights in old school Final Fantasy's involved hitting attack repeatedly. Nothing terribly engaging there. Make whatever limited amount of writing you can muster count, because the writing actually needs to be good.

 

Hmm, dairy farmers are actually pretty big blokes. I wouldn't want to tangle with one of them. Or a cow for that matter.

I've refrained from commenting, as I generally don't find the combat systems in JRPGs that engaging. So making a dialogue system that's more engaging then the combat doesn't really make sense.

But I had to jump in to defend against the imagined slight against my countrymen.

 

Both of you have interesting ideas. Before seeing this thread, I created today a thread of a story-driven battle system that you might want to see:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/a-story-driven-battle-system.323379/

 

My first thought when back to monkey island 3, where you duel on rhyming words.

 

I think the verbiage may have thrown some people. I didn't mean all dialogue would BE combat. You're not going around and kicking everyone's a$$ rather than give them the time of day.

The idea was to have dialogue play out with mechanics similar to the mechanics used in combat.

 

Simply use HUD bars for the NPC and the player - not 'Health' say 'Resolve' bars. Then as a question is asked it will either increase or decrease the resolve bars. This will play out in realtime, so a player can adjust the tack they take in the conversation. rather than have buttons for emotional cues let the questions stand for themselves. So if a player has several ways of asking the same question and if they choose one that is aggressive e.g.' Hey, you, useless peasant have you seen a tall skinny monk? Tell me quick.'

The effect this has on the NPC would be seen in the resolve bar, and the player would then choose the next question accordingly. Many factors could play into this, but pressing buttons for how questions are asked need not be one of them. It would be a form of verbal sparring similar to English banter.

 

I get what you mean, that you want a dialogue system that is as mechanically diverse as combat. I'll forewarn you that it still amounts to a really crappy dialogue system.

Let's spend some time pondering the nature of the two, and start by asking: what is the goal of combat? In essence it's to kill your enemy or survive (and both tasks typically are one and the same). Now what's the goal of a conversation? ... ... ... Any idea? Outside of hitting on chicks, there usually isn't one. Yet the idea of these dialogue systems is to push goals onto NPC's.

Just imagine the player psychoanalyzing you for having a constantly available "be a dick" option. It presents a horribly skewed image of humanity, and ironically it's one that more people would pick up on than by having the player kill everything in sight. Systematized dialogue is just something people are inherently capable of perceiving, largely by finding the faults in its simple logic.

It's still fundamentally dependent on the writing, and the quality of the writing is going to make or break the system faster than anything. In isolation, and as a change of pace, it can work well. Try to use it too frequently though, and it just balloons scope without much return. If you can't deliver on interesting writing, then there probably shouldn't be any.

Just remember, gin should be dry, not writing. You drink dry things, not read them.

 

Perhaps if one examines a real world system that worked like this it might be clearer. Consider the samurai and social structure of feudal Japan during the Togukawa shogunate when speaking wrongly to a samurai could get a peasant killed. The comic books, 'Lone wolf and cub' and the movies based on them such as Babycart from Hades are prime examples of this kind of thing where how one addresses a warrior could often have unforeseen outcomes.

Anyway this sort of system needs playtesting to see how it really plays out and whether it is worth the effort.

There are other goals to a conversation other than hitting on chicks one of those goals is to show one's wit and be amusing, another is to examine ideas through socratic irony, it is never too wise to take oneself too seriously.Conversation as a means to divert possible conflicts within a group also comes to mind. In a weird way it also mirrors how things work in real life, if one can get someone in authority on one's side then this can matter in everyday life.

THink about the Bruce Willis film 'The Last Boy Scout' where he delays getting killed by an assassin through humour until he gets the opportunity to turn his predicament around. So there are many ways a system like this could work.

 

Are you SURE you want to go down this path? I am currently building a training game that is 100% based on communication. And, after more than a year of work, the take-away is that it's damned hard to make conversation fun. I would only go down this path if it was the ABSOLUTE, MOST IMPORTANT mechanic in your game. Otherwise, I'm reminded of what my best engineer said about halfway through our project, "Conversation is the part of games I hate the most."

Gigi

 

Then remove the conversation, use another mechanic where everything is communicated via image, grab an image from the NPCs brain, if the player is looking for a particular dungeon and the NPC knows the loacation remove the fog of war area on a map when the info is pulled from their mind.

Personally I agree, where a dialogue system operates as a combat mechanic then it should probably be the only combat mechanic, if one is looking to make the gathering of information as engaging as combat them make it part of combat, make it so that a poison gas cloud strips visual images from an NPC, or blowing dust into an NPCs face makes them garrulous. If a mechanic breaks the immersion, either remove the mechanic or adapt it to be part of a system that evokes the immersion.

 

Ouch. I'm actually a sci-fi author with two books out. I like to think the writing will be just fine.

But! The largest flaw I saw in any iteration of this is that it automatically paints all NPCs as adversaries. Even if you're having a polite, casual conversation, having a "Resolve Bar" or anything of the sort will make them feel like an enemy.

I think I'll be going a more traditional route with a few adjustments. I'm currently programming a typical branching dialogue system with elements of a Keyword system.

 

I uh, am working with a game that is launching on May 8 (two days) that KINDA does this - but not really. It just caught my attention that the concept is at all similar since it is such a rare item. Take a look (and if you really want, toss me a PM and I'll send you a free key Khanstruct, because I am nice like that... and I don't actually think there's much overlap).

Last Word: http://store.steampowered.com/app/355530/

 

Sent you a PM. I can definitely see where this concept works for Last Word, since the other characters really are all adversaries (in a sense), and the game centers on conversation being the method of combat.

That does also emphasize my point too. In games like mine, where NPCs can be anyone (friend, foe, some Joe at the docks) it doesn't really work to make them all appear as opponents.

 

[QUOTE="
That does also emphasize my point too. In games like mine, where NPCs can be anyone (friend, foe, some Joe at the docks) it doesn't really work to make them all appear as opponents.[/QUOTE]
Of course, but one assumed you did not mean every NPC, if I ask someone for directions in the street I'm not engaging in a form of verbal struggle with them, nor if I go into a shop to buy stuff, nor if a NPC is used as a quest giver and wants the player to do something. When you referred to combat dialogue it seemed clear you meant getting information from NPCs that would not volunteer that information, more or less as a normal combat situation works or can a player attack every single object in your jRPG?

 

Well, it is starting to sound quite a lot like the telltales games.

If anyone says that conversation in your game is boring, you must be doing it wrong.

 

Yes and telltale games are fairly standard dialogue trees and do not seriously change the game ending, a player will end up at the same finish line but they may have gone by the route above, or travelled the route below.

 

Branching story lines do become I big resource draw, nearly every time you branch your story you have to increase the resources it takes to complete your game and it becomes costly .

 

That's certainly the case with games that have to have a fixed format, I believe it is possible to have a variety of differing win states, but a game such as Telltales 'Walking Dead' is locked by the format and the neccesity of following the dictates of another medium, but also because of the business model, it's why many game franchises only change in small increments because it allows the codebase to be reused and games largely reskinned and some profit to be made. The truth is that commercial games companies are fully of talented people, they are aware of all the failures and faults with games, but it's a business and the coders and artists are simply doing the best they can within a limited budget. Could a Telltale games be less linear and have more meaningful choices - yes, but it would cost more and the gamers that like these games would barely notice the change because very few people will play a game more than once just to see if they chose 'a' rarher than 'b' they would get to 'c' rather than 'd'. Too many distractions too many other games to play.

These sort of questions as asked by the OP do not really get asked in commercial game companies, only by indie developers and they're really interesting questions to ponder. Personally I got quite a few different dialogue system ideas just by thinking how one could implement such a system, it's definitely a lively time to be involved in game development.

 

I find this topic very interesting. I always felt that dialogue was an underestimated game mechanic, especially in RPG:s, considering both its importance in real life (the basis of human communication) and how much game time is actually spent with the dialogue engine in most games today.

Usually, the combat mechanics gets all the focus in terms of stats, skills, equipment and influence on the story (with some exceptions). Sure, combat is very straight-forward, visually rewarding and easy to translate into stats, but I believe dialogue and social game mechanics could become much more intriguing and interactive if they're explored further. To me, they're a way more interesting way to resolve conflicts than physical combat.

One way to go is to make a more abstract dialogue system, where you might not even say specific things but rather try different social actions, like "Try to convince", "Agree", "Listen", "Flirt" etc, and all participants have stats like mood, patience and relations to each other. If you went all the way, you could probably make a complete abstract dialogue "combat" system that plays very much like a turn-based combat engine, but with less visual effects. Obviously, this abstraction takes away the most interesting aspect of dialogues: the actual words being said. But maybe you can combine it with real sentences and find a nice balance. As a result, the consequences could be more varied than they usually are with normal combat (the enemy dies/disappears).

I can't think of an example of this type of abstract stat-based dialogue system. The closest I've seen is probably the classic Baldur's Gate-style, when certain social stats or skills unlock new dialogue options or actions, but that's more like a traditional dialogue tree with some added flavor, although it's not much strategy involved other than maxing a certain stat or skill and then always choosing the most high-leveled option.

I do like how Monkey Island 1's insult sword fighting was done, especially the fight against the Sword Master, where you had to improvise and counter new insults she threw at you using old lines you had learned before. It was very much like a puzzle game, but with dialogues.

Check it out here:

Keywords, like you mention, is another way to make dialogue systems more interactive. I'm thinking of using a similar mechanic in my game, where you get keywords for all important objects or characters you meet, and you can then "Ask about" or "State opinion of" them in various ways. The question is how to make the NPC responses varied enough, and make it not feel like you have to ask everyone everything.

One way to take it further could be if you could combine keywords in certain ways to unlock new dialogue options. Like you have an inventory of keywords that can be used, and by combining them or using them in certain ways you help your character come up with new ideas and new things to say. Obviously, this might make the game more into a puzzle/adventure game rather than an RPG.

 

This brings up another interesting point. In almost all games, your character spends the bulk of their time asking questions. "Where do I go?" "What do you need?" "How do I get into the castle?" etc, etc, etc. Rarely do you ever get to state an opinion that will alter the interaction (Fallout did this to an extent.)

 

Turn this on it's head. Have the NPCs do the asking and leave it to the player to provide the information. This will allow real interaction an influence on the NPCs choices in the world.

 

A fundamental problem with this approach is that you are thinking of dialog in terms of combat. Talking is talking. It's the option you go to when combat isn't what you're looking for. Combat implies a competition, one which will have a winner and a loser. But conversations don't have to end up that way. They have the potential of ending in compromises.

The benefit here is that a considerably greater degree of nuance can be introduced when there you aren't limited to just one objective. A dialog system would be much more fulfilling to the player if it was focused not on conquest, but on achieving objectives. And you should always provide more than one objective that the user can push towards.

 

Is it too late in the life cycle of this thread to make a joke about SJWs, regarding the title?