Skills in Fallout 4: What We Know

[PossibleCabbage]

Here is how I would design a dialogue wheel for an RPG so as to not lose anything:

The basic interface is a wheel with up to 8 spokes, in in the 4 cardinal and 4 diagonal directions. A selection is chosen by holding in a direction and then hitting the "interact" button. The world pauses for you to talk to people because development resources are better spent on facial animations (e.g. making eye contact) than "coming up with ways to shoot people mid-sentence."

When the controller is in a neutral position, each active spoke has a brief summary of the the basic meaning of the response (e.g. "yes", "no", "what's a deathclaw?" "[threaten]", [invoke Institute status] etc.) possibly with an icon to go with it.

Highlighting a response creates a pop-up that gives the exact text of what the character would say if that option is chosen. This is potentially effectively more efficient than listing all the options since players can quickly eliminate the things they don't want to say by looking at the summaries and instead simply read the ones they are interested in.

Pretty much the only thing you're going to give up here is that you can't have more than 8 responses, and you have to interface with the game in order to read them all. But it's probably a better option for people playing on a controller than "scrolling through a list". But putting your dialogue options in a circle really isn't any different than putting them in a line, since a circle is just a line whose endpoints have been joined.

 

[Askorti]

I don't own a console, nor do I play on a controller, so could somebody explain to me why is it such a big deal to have a list? How is it difficult to use?

 

[Crni Vuk]

You have more to read and think about what you do.

 

[fred2]

I don't own a console, nor do I play on a controller, so could somebody explain to me why is it such a big deal to have a list? How is it difficult to use?

Dialogue wheels wasn't designed for a controller\consoles per see, it's an intuitive system designed with casual audience in mind, and while consoles are considered as the poster boys for casual crowd pretty much every major title cater to them regardless of platform\controller.

Dialogue wheels usually used to provide clearly marked options in conversation, which is very useful in Action-RPGs where there is a large portion of people who don't care about the narrative. And while they can limit the complexity of player inquiry and depth of responses, with good design and well-written dialogue it can work remarkably as we seen in Alpha protocol.

IMO its not the UI, its who you intend to write for... carriage before the horse kind of thing.

The world pauses for you to talk to people because development resources are better spent on facial animations (e.g. making eye contact) than "coming up with ways to shoot people mid-sentence."

Did you know that FO3 had "that", although iirc the reason for it was because they didn't had idle animations for everyone. As for the changes in FO4, it can still do that, but has more freedom when necessary ( not just to shoot people mid-sentence ) they also vastly improved facial expressions and animations using completely different tech, a little of which we already glimpse in the trailer.

 

[Walpknut]

Here is how I would design a dialogue wheel for an RPG so as to not lose anything:

The basic interface is a wheel with up to 8 spokes, in in the 4 cardinal and 4 diagonal directions. A selection is chosen by holding in a direction and then hitting the "interact" button. The world pauses for you to talk to people because development resources are better spent on facial animations (e.g. making eye contact) than "coming up with ways to shoot people mid-sentence."

When the controller is in a neutral position, each active spoke has a brief summary of the the basic meaning of the response (e.g. "yes", "no", "what's a deathclaw?" "[threaten]", [invoke Institute status] etc.) possibly with an icon to go with it.

Highlighting a response creates a pop-up that gives the exact text of what the character would say if that option is chosen. This is potentially effectively more efficient than listing all the options since players can quickly eliminate the things they don't want to say by looking at the summaries and instead simply read the ones they are interested in.

Pretty much the only thing you're going to give up here is that you can't have more than 8 responses, and you have to interface with the game in order to read them all. But it's probably a better option for people playing on a controller than "scrolling through a list". But putting your dialogue options in a circle really isn't any different than putting them in a line, since a circle is just a line whose endpoints have been joined.

It's weird how to make dialogue wheels work they need to make such overly complicated additions to it, when a list offers a quick selection with no need to have pop ups, hover over choices to know what they are etc.
It's almost as if dialogue wheels were a terrible idea, huh?

 

[Askorti]

I really struggle to see how a wheel is better than a list. The only advantage I see is that it may or may not be prettier, but from technical and utilitarian standpoint, a list seems to be just much better.

 

[TorontoReign]

Want to talk about skills? Here ya go. Shit sandwich.

http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1528556-perks-have-special-requirements-confirmed-quakecon-report/

 

[Walpknut]

"This is freackign awesome"
"More intuitive system"
"More variety"
What the fuck....
I just want to puke.....

 

[Oppen]

"More variety". Todd said there are around 170 perks. These perks are capped by your level in a given stat. There are 7 stats, 10 levels per stat. With 70 "units" to call them some way, we have only 170 possibilities to choose from? That's around 2.5 per level per stat. This doesn't sound like an increase in variety, specially taking into account we already had a handful of perks when we had skills.

 

[Walpknut]

Not to mention that certain perks had multi requirements to take now they are just tied to their respective Stat, So now you are just picking a stat and go with it until the end, no real variety is offered there, no crossingover of skills, hell not even support skills at all. Gonna bet most Perks are gonna be just percentage increases too. Also Obviously this will have an absurdly high level cap and a Perk every level, way to make Perks less rewarding and to completely take out a system that was the main tool to define your character yourself Bethesda..... Great RPG design there...

 

[AgentBJ09]

Can't say I'm surprised that the post-QuakeCon opinions among the masses are positive, but this is already giving me Skyrim flashbacks. What was lost in terms of Attributes there, Skills are following suit in Fallout, and its already looking like Perks will be made into a subsection of roadblocks towards what Skills already did fine in past games.

Plus, no level requirements? That's part of what made Perks unique and a treat to get every few levels: planning your character or looking ahead to see what you needed to get a Perk you wanted. If you can take Sniper right out of the gate, much less every other Perk, they lose more of what made them special.

And what about the by-level Perks from past games? The stuff you could get without any requirement beyond your level? What happened to those?

EDIT: Companions are going to be romance-able, as one poster further down that thread pointed out. No. Just no.

 

[Crni Vuk]

It makes sense for Fallout 4 though, since the skills had almost no use in Fallout 3. I mean outside of hacking and lock picking and such stuff. So they could as well remove it. Because they sadly never played a role in dialogues. Not like in F1 and F2. Sadly. Fallout 5 might become a full shooter at this point ... Dialogues will be modernized as well. Now you have 2 buttons instead of 4. Your character will either say, "Yes, I will do the mission for you" or "No, I will come back later!".

 

[Walpknut]

Pffft 2 dialogue options? Nah, they will go full on "Press F to pay respects" at this point.

 

[Emperor]

The correct name is ''cinematic conversations" guys. You know, the current trend on AAA games nowadays.

 

[AgentBJ09]

It makes sense for Fallout 4 though, since the skills had almost no use in Fallout 3. I mean outside of hacking and lock picking and such stuff. So they could as well remove it. Because they sadly never played a role in dialogues. Not like in F1 and F2. Sadly. Fallout 5 might become a full shooter at this point ... Dialogues will be modernized as well. Now you have 2 buttons instead of 4. Your character will either say, "Yes, I will do the mission for you" or "No, I will come back later!".

Not in dialogue, but they had use everywhere else and building skills mattered beyond player direct input. Fallout 3/NV were ARPGs, don't forget.

The series going more shooter in design...I wouldn't put it past Bethesda at this point. They seem dead set on appealing to audiences that were never in danger of being interested.

 

[TorontoReign]

It makes sense for Fallout 4 though, since the skills had almost no use in Fallout 3. I mean outside of hacking and lock picking and such stuff. So they could as well remove it. Because they sadly never played a role in dialogues. Not like in F1 and F2. Sadly. Fallout 5 might become a full shooter at this point ... Dialogues will be modernized as well. Now you have 2 buttons instead of 4. Your character will either say, "Yes, I will do the mission for you" or "No, I will come back later!".

So if you are getting fucked just bend over and take it in the ass? I would rather they learn how to make good RPG's, but the dudebro crowd controls the market, so I guess we have nothing except "Van Buren" or Wasteland 3.

Anyone defending this shit should really check and see if they are a pod person. Can we do the blood test like in Thing to find out who is human and who is a pod person?

 

[Walpknut]

Bethesda could've learned from New vegas, but maybe this move towards removing skills was a knee jerk reaction towards getting out done at every aspect by Obsidian.

 

[Crni Vuk]

It makes sense for Fallout 4 though, since the skills had almost no use in Fallout 3. I mean outside of hacking and lock picking and such stuff. So they could as well remove it. Because they sadly never played a role in dialogues. Not like in F1 and F2. Sadly. Fallout 5 might become a full shooter at this point ... Dialogues will be modernized as well. Now you have 2 buttons instead of 4. Your character will either say, "Yes, I will do the mission for you" or "No, I will come back later!".

So if you are getting fucked just bend over and take it in the ass? I would rather they learn how to make good RPG's, but the dudebro crowd controls the market, so I guess we have nothing except "Van Buren" or Wasteland 3.

Anyone defending this shit should really check and see if they are a pod person. Can we do the blood test like in Thing to find out who is human and who is a pod person?

I am on your side. I am just saying for Bethesda and F3 it makes sense. Not for Fallout as franchise. Turning it into a senseless shooter is as far away from the Fallout roots as it can get ... but that's the future :/. Because the truth is that most players, the fans of Beth probably won't see it as getting fucked by them. They will again see Beth as the masters of RPGs - of course with using sale numbers as argument - and F4 as pinacle of the RPG evolution.

Doesn't mean that we have to like it though.

 

[fred2]

I really struggle to see how a wheel is better than a list. The only advantage I see is that it may or may not be prettier, but from technical and utilitarian standpoint, a list seems to be just much better.

How is it better from technical and utilitarian standpoint for games like action-RPGs, built or casual crowd and offering limited number of actions/interactions ? ( e.g. good/natural/bad or aggressive/professional etc )

Also lists has been used in the same capacity before. But wheels does the same thing, a bit more intuitive and less error prone to pick marked, especially on consoles and gamepads where they correlates to controller keys placement.

 

[Walpknut]

Because Dialogue wheels have always hid information from players.

Also how is the wheel "less error prone"? Unless you are picking at light speeds and not paying attention a list is just going up and down options and picking with a button, wheels not only hide information but if you happen to move the analogue stick a bit while choosing you might end up choosing a completeley different thing.