Guild Wars 2

I’ve been fishing through the forums and I think I’ve found a sentiment that a lot of people are feeling; that the Living Story, at the moment, doesn’t really offer the player very much room to roleplay, to flesh out their own character’s personality or to have much influence on their relationship with the other characters in the story, like the biconics. Personally, I find that these are really big problems when my character can’t quite act how I think they’d act- or they can’t act at all. I don’t know how good I’ll be at making an actual suggestion, but I think I might be able to proffer a few ideas which will maybe help with the lack of dialogue options.

The player character’s personality
So we already have a system for this in-game, which is the Charisma/Dignity/Ferocity triangle which you can see on your character chart. At the moment, it doesn’t really do a hell of a lot; there’s the occasional Personal Story element that can be expedited by using an appropriate personality conversation option, and there are a few dynamic events that interact with it, but these are really very few and far between, and the system at the moment is really not very relevant to the game as a whole. It’s, for better or worse, a tiny bit of fluff which doesn’t actually do much, and it has absolutely no bearing on the Living Story at the moment.

During the current Living Story release, we have a dialogue option which has come under quite a bit of flak recently; the discussion with Marjory about your character’s thoughts on landing the final blow on Scarlet. There aren’t enough options for what every character might want to say or do. There’s no option to show remorse for having to kill someone who wasn’t acting under their own power, and there’s no option to chastise your ‘friends’ for showing such a sentiment. But, there’s only so much space for dialogue.

So, where I’m going with this; we have a system that’s not really doing anything and we have a problem in the Living Story. Why not stick the two together; allow a lot more dialogue options, but with some order or slight modification behind them which depends on the character’s personality?

Onto actual implementation; I drew up this quick triangle of personalities in GW2 and a set of lines to join them up; nevermind the jagged edges, I did this in MSpaint. My very rough idea for this would be to allow a player to pick an option from their own personality, and any personalities which are connected with a line. For example, a Charming character would be able to pick any Charming, Captivating, Scoundrel, Unpredictable and Diplomatic options which appear, and by picking an option, they’ll move along the line towards that personality; that Charming character will get Ferocity points from picking Scoundrel options, or they’ll lose Charisma by picking Unpredictable options, or they’ll gain more Charisma by picking Captivating options. This opens up a potentially huge number of dialogue options which could possibly all be covered by text, which is fairly cheap to do.

This isn’t really very useful on its own, we need actual relationships with the other characters, so continuing in next post

Other characters’ personalities
At the moment, we’re kinda sorta forced into being the Biconics’ friends. I don’t like that because I am a mean person by nature. I want to have the option to make them not like me. This is an RPG, and an RPG isn’t complete unless you’re able to act like a big jerk- But how do I make them not like me?

I have a few rough thoughts on this, but my main one so far is that key NPCs have two things:
1. A simple relationship bar with the player character; a scale from 0 to 100. If your relationship with a character is 0, they really, really dislike you; they might fear you, they might hate you, etc etc. If your relationship with a character is 100, you two are best bros and they will totally buy you drinks when you go to the pub.
2. Characters have action classes which they like and dislike. A character likes and dislikes certain actions, and linked actions, and performing actions which a character approves or disapproves on moves that relationship bar up or down. Let’s say that any direct action they like or dislike moves the relationship by 4, and any action linked to a like or dislike moves the relationship by 2.

With that in mind, let’s look at a character like Kasmeer. Kasmeer likes Charming, Diplomatic and Noble actions, and dislikes Barbaric, Brute and Militant actions. This makes Diplomatic actions her absolute favorite, and if you do one of those, you’ll get +4 from the direct action and another +4 from the two actions linked to it which she likes; so if you’re a diplomatic character who uses diplomatic options a lot, you two will get along like a house on fire. If you do a Barbaric option, on the other hand, she won’t be very fond of you at all; your relationship will go down by 8.

With that in mind, what should actually change as a result of being friends or not-so-friends with someone? This depends on the character in question, but as a character likes or dislikes you more, they might be more or less reluctant to talk to you, they might be more antagonistic or affectionate towards you, or certain actions might be more or less likely to gain positive results.

If, for example, Evon Gnashblade has a 60 or less score to to you, he’ll be more or less how he is right now; not very appreciative of you knocking off Scarlet. If he has a 20 or less score, he might refuse to talk to you altogether, saying something like “buy something or go away”. If, on the other hand, he’s really keen on you (say, 75+), you get additional dialogue options- You might be able to ask him whether he plans on moving back into Lion’s Arch and setting up the BLTC there again, or whether he plans on moving elsewhere. If you’re good friends with Ellen Kiel, you might be able to go talk to her and try to convince her to discharge Evon from the Lionguard. We had the voting system back in the day, and people were really keen on those choices; maybe this’d be a good opportunity to slide in little choices here and there.

I wrote up a huge spiel and I don’t know how to stop, send help
That’s more or less everything I had in mind and I think that these are really big problem areas in the Living Story. Being able to have your character actually express themselves would make your character feel a lot more of a part of the story, and immersion can make or break an RPG.

So yeah. In short, personality unlocks more conversation options, and unlocked options affect NPCs’ opinions of you and open up more dialogue options. Thoughts?

While it would be really cool if your character’s personality stats had more bearing on available dialog options, the simple fact is it would create more work for the writers, and probably more troublesome; the localization teams. Every line written likely takes days to finalize and be translated. Not to mention checking statements for continuity issues, which need to go through the whole process again if an issue is found.

Edge cases would be weird too, what would happen in a LS dungeon? Take the aggregate of everyone’s relationship rating? Just be neutral even though everyone might have a 0% or 100% rating? Call out individual players? (Imagine that: “Hey! It’s my favorite person! I’m so glad to… whoa, you’re hanging out with that guy? Really? I hope he dies. I thought you had better standards.” )

Maybe NPCs could have “personality triangle” stats for expected player personality so they notice when you’re acting out of character or have had a major personality shift between chapters? How much dialog should be written for that? (Imagine: Anakin Skywalker shows up for the Marionette battle, and a month later, Darth Vader arrives to stomp Scarlet with force choke or whatever. Would the NPCs notice? Would anyone ask “Wow, what happened to you? That Miasma sure is some bad stuff.” “I talked to a speed boost NPC … a few times. darth vader breathing sound” )

Having a lot of extra dialog would also need more voice acting. I know they don’t really need it, but it always strikes me as odd when NPCs give you a few “silent” paragraphs of text (during which you, and all related NPCs usually stand around motionless, while other players, if present, jump around like baboons yelling “y u stnding arnd??? lts gooooo!!! kick pls!”), then the NPCs suddenly spring to life to deliver some opening line and get on with the show. Needless to say, recording audio for everything would be quite a task, especially considering it would all need to be localized, and can’t forget it also needs to be downloaded and put in the .dat file forever.

If you ask me, we’re pretty lucky we get what we get, at the cadence we’re seeing updates.

I like your idea. But I don’t know how feasible it is to revamp it to this degree. But hopefully Anet does look into the Personality system and does something about it.

ZDBioHazard.8246:

Edge cases would be weird too, what would happen in a LS dungeon? Take the aggregate of everyone’s relationship rating? Just be neutral even though everyone might have a 0% or 100% rating? Call out individual players? (Imagine that: “Hey! It’s my favorite person! I’m so glad to… whoa, you’re hanging out with that guy? Really? I hope he dies. I thought you had better standards.” )

At the moment all instances are, I think, derived out of the instance owner as the “main character” and every other party member is more or less just sticking around. Going for multiplayer stuff would be pretty complicated and maybe a bit too ambitious, yeah, so stick with singleplayer stuff and just have instances run off the main party member.

How many people actually go into these living story dungeons as a group? At the moment, personal story completely disregards any players you might have in your party when it comes to dialogue; LS may as well be the same.

Maybe NPCs could have “personality triangle” stats for expected player personality so they notice when you’re acting out of character or have had a major personality shift between chapters? How much dialog should be written for that? (Imagine: Anakin Skywalker shows up for the Marionette battle, and a month later, Darth Vader arrives to stomp Scarlet with force choke or whatever. Would the NPCs notice? Would anyone ask “Wow, what happened to you? That Miasma sure is some bad stuff.” “I talked to a speed boost NPC … a few times. darth vader breathing sound” )

Doesn’t really need that much. When an option is available, have a slight deviation for friends, if the dialogue wouldn’t otherwise make sense.

I’m personally not really expecting an utterly titanic web of interweaving conversation and relationship levels, but a few options. A conversation will probably never cover the entire web of options, but instead have 3-4 options out of the web.

Having a lot of extra dialog would also need more voice acting. I know they don’t really need it, but it always strikes me as odd when NPCs give you a few “silent” paragraphs of text (during which you, and all related NPCs usually stand around motionless, while other players, if present, jump around like baboons yelling “y u stnding arnd??? lts gooooo!!! kick pls!”), then the NPCs suddenly spring to life to deliver some opening line and get on with the show. Needless to say, recording audio for everything would be quite a task, especially considering it would all need to be localized, and can’t forget it also needs to be downloaded and put in the .dat file forever.

I really, really hate voice acting because of how much more expensive it’s become to make dialogue. That said, cutting down on voice acting isn’t too rough; it can be used to cover several dialogue options at once. With Marjory’s question in the current release, for example, she says the same thing no matter which option you pick.

If you ask me, we’re pretty lucky we get what we get, at the cadence we’re seeing updates.

Luck implies that it’s out of our hands and out of ANet’s hands, which is very much not the case. If we want more stuff and better stuff it’s our responsibility to let them know what we want and why we want it.

The Aftermath is a fine example of how this could have been used I found myself not wanting to select any of the three choices.

Instead of a choice of three inappropriate replies we could have had a choice determined by the type of character we have, Charisma (Joking) Dignity (Mourning those lost) Ferocity (Celebrating Scarlets death).

We need more to the reply dialogue, especially personality options as it really is lacking.

There really should be a few more personality categories but I completely agree these should affect our dialogue options in conversations and should affect our emotes and idle animation as well. I dont feel that being sympathetic to Scarlet would be covered in any of the current personalities and really the joking seems out of place for all the current personalities too.

The personality should be decided upon character creation, I mean we currently have a choice that gives a small boost to one of the three but our character should be whatever personality we want from the start.

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

There really should be a few more personality categories but I completely agree these should affect our dialogue options in conversations and should affect our emotes and idle animation as well. I dont feel that being sympathetic to Scarlet would be covered in any of the current personalities and really the joking seems out of place for all the current personalities too.

The personality should be decided upon character creation, I mean we currently have a choice that gives a small boost to one of the three but our character should be whatever personality we want from the start.

It’s really really easy to move your character from one personality to another; talk to the speed buff NPCs in DR and you can pick a direction to push in.

IMO, sympathetic would probably be Diplomatic or Noble, and joking would probably be Scoundrel or Unpredictable.

You can express sympathy for Scarlet while at the same time staying true to the ferocious personality trait. Just write it in a way which disapproves of the attitudes of the other characters. Instead of joining on the band wagon making light of Scarlet’s death you could scold them for being so taking pleasure in the death of someone who fell victim to a dragon and lost control of her mind.

I don’t need a really complicated system but I certainly agree that the current dialogue options and the forced relationship in the game doesn’t closely resemble how I feel.

Shiren.9532:

You can express sympathy for Scarlet while at the same time staying true to the ferocious personality trait. Just write it in a way which disapproves of the attitudes of the other characters. Instead of joining on the band wagon making light of Scarlet’s death you could scold them for being so taking pleasure in the death of someone who fell victim to a dragon and lost control of her mind.

I don’t need a really complicated system but I certainly agree that the current dialogue options and the forced relationship in the game doesn’t closely resemble how I feel.

Just more good ol’ plain options would be really really nice too. Or more spread of the options we have now.

Do you think that what I’ve suggested is too complicated?