Dialogue
From Neverend
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[edit] Player dialogue
MMOs are meant to provide some social interaction, but many times people simply don't talk. In an imagination based game such as D&D players need to talk to describe and evaluate things, but in a fully visualized 3D world people have no need to describe a wall or a building. But what if you could?
Some games have simple emotes to indicate something, such as "points at" or "looks at." If taken as a form of primitive caveman communication, what would a more advanced form be?
Assume that everything has a name and description, such as a wooden building or a tree. The player looks at a tree and is given a narrative description that he reads, such as "the bark on the tree looks rough, the branches are healthy looking, the leaves are still green."
Now let's say sentences are made of words, and that description is a word. The player can form a sentence such as I noticed (description), or it seems (description. Other words include I, you, we, and the current target. When talking about something in the past, the player brings up a menu and selects logged targets such as objects, monsters, and NPCs, sorted by last encountered. The player can give a description based on something in the past.
The player can describe weapons, items, and equipment by showing it to others, describing its visual appearance, or describing its stats and power in the form of descriptive words, such as "it has a radiant aura" for a magical sword.
Menus can exist for other words including verbs, advectives, and emotions. While the player can type eveything out, the use of predefined words can make typing long sentences quicker by using macros or hotkeys, and by having reactive conditions such as "if attacked by powerful monster, say 'I need some assistance with (monster)', if attacked by a weak monster, say 'Die, pathetic (monster)". Players can set reaction responses based on different conditions in the menu.
Some form of spam prevention can alleviate repeated text, such as telling the player "you don't feel like repeating yourself" after the same text has been used more than a few times.
[edit] NPC dialogue
Older games have had typed in dialogue. While this adds a sense of immersion, it has the main drawback of a right or wrong word, sentence, or grammar structure that would have to be updated indefinitely to accomodate for every possible variation of a word. Or, players would simply find out which words are right and say those. "Vendor bank buy guards" is an example in UO that uses four common keywords without having to use them in a real sentence.
Menu based responses simplify the process by having about 4 different responses, which amount to a correct keyword with no guesswork, and have any number of sentences attached to them. For example:
"Who art thou, m'lady?" equals: Name? "What are you doing today?" equals: Job? "Do you have anything to offer?" equals: Buy?
The player is effectively communicating entire sentences equal to one word. Some responses might actually string words together.
"Who is your older brother?" equals Who: Rinaldo "Who is your sister?" equals Who: Christine
The amount of available choices may be greater or fewer based on stats. Let's say there are 7 choices total.
- Hello, m'lady
- Who do you think you are, bitch?
- Er, hi.
- Give me all you own and you'll be spared.
- Please me or die.
- Uh, um, er, urk.
- The weather is exceptional today.
The player will only have some responses available, based on his current stats. The first choice requires charisma, the second requires low charisma, the third would have poor or medium charisma, the fourth and fifth would have low honor or a more aggressive/sadistic attitude, the sixth would have low intelligence and the seventh would have wisdom/knowledge.
Now the NPC response is based on what her personality likes or dislikes. If she's a bandit, she may like blunt dialogue. If she's a noble, she'll look down on someone with low intelligence or charisma. If she's a peasant, she may dislike high intelligence or wisdom for being too out there. A healer would look at low intelligence with pity, while a shopkeeper would become pissed off.
Requests and Offers are prompts that allow decisions to be made.
I request a player or NPC to accompany me. He says no. I offer 20 gold. He still says no.
I offer thirty gold and request a shortsword.
I request help fighting off a monster outside of town.
I talk to a shopkeeper, and offer 140 instead of the 150 price.
A shopkeeper offers me 200 / hour to work at his store.
I request someone craft an item for 100.
When making a request or offer, options can be selected from a menu, with custom variables. This includes custom sentences such as "help kill n of y monster" or "accompany me to location" or "give me x gold or action takes place".
NPCs will give requests and offers to players. Variables and sentences are based on current context. For example, a group of Gnolls is attacking the town. An NPC will offer a player 30 gold for defeating them. The player can refuse, and the NPC will give up or offer more gold.
Bandit NPCs will threaten players by requesting them to pay gold or be attacked. Some intelligent monsters can be offered gold to avoid confrontation, once.
Beggars will request gold. Healers may request your help in healing others, or offer their healing to you. Crafters may request materials for x gold. Farmers may request your help in planting seeds. Whores may offer 200 gold for a good time. A king may request you save the princess, and you can request he pay you handsomely or die instead, and then kill him anyway.
I'm also thinking about scripted dialogue that shows up in games based on various actions. In one adult game there is scripted dialogue that occurs during sex (though you can turn it off) - after not too long a while you've read every variation. I kind of like keeping it on anyway because it corresponds to the level of excitement of your "toon" and describes the current activity. You can, of course, add your own role play to that. However...
I would like to see more variation in dialog - something that makes me WANT to read it - not just glance at it. It doesn't seem to me that it would take much extra effort to script 10 possible in game descriptions for each activity. Or 20... or more. Even add a few new ones every week. This would help keep people's interest. Its not my intent to suggest this should be used instead of role play but rather to enhance it. And the option to turn it off if you don't want it is a good one as well. But if you do opt to use it it would be nice to not see the same thing over and over again.
NPC conversation can be ended in a positive, negative, or neutral reaction. The
player can choose a response that ends the conversation, such as thanks, apology, disdain, or
insult. The player can also walk away and end the conversation. Attacks, stealing, alerts and
crimes will end a conversation. Talking to the NPC again will show they are aware of the attack,
theivery, alert or crime, and will respond by saying there are more important things, by
requesting help from the player, by giving detailed information, or by ignoring the player.
[edit] Requests
NPCs will ask players to do them a favor. This is based on the reputation and power of the player. A request will not be asked towards an enemy or criminal player, or a criminal with a low reputation. Requests are based on challenge level, and will be appropriate for the power of the player. Requests that are by default too challenging or too weak will not be given. Requests that adjust to player power level will be given if conditions exist.
The NPC chooses a request based on class, job, and needs, and surveys the area for an appropriate task. The difficulty of the task depends on power, so a weak player will be told to kill weak enemies at a nearby cave, and a strong player will be told to kill a powerful monster or a greater number of monsters to complete the quest.
The request may require giving an item or money to the NPC, or to other NPCs. The request may be job specific, such as gathering wood, preparing pies, helping with a store or butchering extra meat, or healing the injured at a clergy. The request is based on the player, the needs of the
NPC, and the surrounding area. A simple request for gold or craft items does not require a survey of the area, while a request to kill monsters requires finding the location of monsters and giving directions to the player, or cancelling if no monsters exist.
NPC requests depend mostly on the needs of the NPC. The strongest needs will have the most priority in a request. A poor beggar will want money, and a starving man will want food, and an attacked man will want protection and stopping the attackers. Similarly, needs of specific jobs must be met, such as handling surplus goods, gathering shortage items, helping process goods, protecting from thieves and attackers, and running a shop. This requires a high trust and reputation of the player.
The player can deny the request, ignore it, ask for a better reward, or insult the NPC. This will usually case a drop in reputation, but the NPC has a chance to offer more reward if the request is urgent.
NPCs choose from a database of possible quests, and narrow down choices for up to 10 requests. They will give out the request with the highest priority, so protecting from immediate attackers will be more important than gathering grain. The requests given are also filtered by surrounding land, player power, job, class, city, and other factors that ignore innapropriate requests. An NPC will not ask a weak player to slay a dragon, and will not ask to defeat monsters if no monsters are in the surrounding land.
The reward depends on NPC inventory, and the NPC may not have enough reward, may have to give a substitute reward, or may use storage inventory. The NPC may try to avoid poverty and refuse to give a reward if giving it will result in poverty.
NPCs can react to giving rewards with fear, anger, humility, apology, acceptance, or cowardice.
An NPC who does not have a reward may flee, apologise, or ask if a substitute is possible. A unique NPC may substitute with beneficial spells, joining the party, or being "in debt" to the player.
The player reaction to the reward or lack of reward will cause an increase or decrease in reputation. Giving money when there is or is no reward will increase reputation. Insulting a reward or lack of reward will decrease it. A player can act angry, thankful, unappreciative, mocking, prideful, disdainful, snobby, or other reactions depending on personality and dialogue choices.
[edit] Requests, monsters
Requests, monsters: NPCs will request a player to attack nearby monsters. NPCs will ask players to attack monsters within an area, any monsters they can immediately see in the area, any monsters they have encountered before in the area, and any monsters they are currently encountering through attacks or threats. NPCs will offer more based on how serious the threat is, and thank the player when the monster is defeated. NPCs typically ask for exterminating monsters that are in their travel path, such as an NPC going through forest. Small threats such as animals may only require scaring them off or making sure they don't present a threat to the NPC. This may include escorting and defending from attacks.
[edit] Requests, monster clearing
NPCs will ask players to "clear" areas that are inhabited by monsters, by destroying all monsters in that area. NPCs will first check an area and tell a player about the monsters in that area who are strongest or who are greater in number. They will ask players to clear caves, forests, plains, mountains, and camps or hives. They will ask players to eliminate bandit camps and other evil NPCs.
[edit] Requests, items
NPCs will ask for items based on their needs. This includes clothing, money, crafting materials, crafting tools, spells, ingredients, and other items appropriate to job and class.
[edit] Requests, unique items
Unique items will spawn in the world that draw the attention of certain NPC jobs, classes, alignments, or skill levels. NPCs who fit these requirements given by the item and are within a certain distance of the item will now desire that item, and ask players to retrieve it, ask to be escorted or join a party to retrieve the item, offer a reward, threaten players, offer partying after retrieving it, give reputation or alignment bonuses, or give the location of another unique item. Unique items can be of value to a player, such as a gem or a scroll, or they can be of no value, such as an heirloom or belonging of an ancestor or group.
Only eight unique items will be paid attention to in an area, any more will be ignored until on of them is retrieved. Unique items are "satisfied" when they are in the possession of their owner, causing all others to have no desire for it. This also happens when a unique item is destroyed, or when it is in possession of an NPC for several hours and then becomes destroyed.
If the player agrees to find the item, and acquires it, then it is satisfied for a duration of time based on distance to the NPC who requested the item. If this time has elapsed, then NPCs will still request the item, by notifying players that it is in someone's possession. Players will then confront the player and offer a reward, steal, or fight them. If the player places the item in a safe or box, it is still in his possession. If a player steals the item from the NPC after giving it back, the NPC will request the player give it back, and request other players to get it back from that player.
[edit] Requests, escort
NPCs will ask to accompany players, by offering services for free, requesting payment once or for a duration of time, offering accompanyment for a duration of time, threatening, requesting protection or escorting, or partying for free. This is based on alignment, morality, reputation, charisma, and percieved skill of the player. Escorts have little combat ability and will need protection until they arrive at a certain location, a certain distance from where they started, a certain type of terrain, any city or town, or a specific city or town. Healers will focus on healing but run around the player during combat, unless they have sufficient skill. Adventurers will fight to their best ability. Bandits and NPCs who threaten to join will escort the player to bandit camps and evil areas.
[edit] Favors
NPCs will do something for a player. Based on the fame, alignment, city, job,
class, power, or reputation of the player, the NPC will perform an action based on job, class,
and inventory of the NPC:
Offer to give money Offer to give an item Offer to sell items at a discount Offer to join as a companion Offer to cast a beneficial spell Offer healing
[edit] Message Board
A Message Board exists within a town, and provides information from players who post on it. There are different categories of messages, and a max limit of messages per category and per person.
-Questions -Help needed -Requests -Wanted -Looking for -Buying -Selling -Questing and adventure -Exploration -Escorts, bodygaurds, and assistants -Business announcements -Building announcements -Crafting announcements -Local announcements -Entertainment
Messages can use manual typing as well as keywords selected from a list, including items in inventory, and items/objects/monsters/NPCs that have been logged as "encountered." Word filters can prevent certain words. Messageboard owners can moderate or delete messages.
[edit] NPC memory
Everything has a name- Rocks, trees, buildings, animals, plants, monsters, items. NPCs will have strong positive or negative reactions to things, but will have no reaction to neutral things such as rocks or the ground, as they have no feeling one way or the other.
Every action has a name- attack, eat, sleep, mine, buy, sell, craft, talk, kill, cast, pick up, use, look at, touch, sit down, lay down, follow.
Every thing and every action is listed on the server. NPCs have limited access to this list. As they encounter more things in the world, they gain access to the list. This is known as experience. Every NPC has their own experience with the world, based on what they have and haven't encountered.
NPCs will associate things they have encountered with emotions and with actions. The storage of this information for all NPCs is known as memory. An NPC will see a bandit and have no reaction. An NPC will be attacked by the bandit and have the association of "attacked" and "hurt," and the emotion "fear." Now the NPC will fear bandits because of attack. If a player asks an NPC about bandits, they will give a response that indicates fear.
NPCs have an emotional scale that rises and falls with familiarity. NPCs will become more familiar with things and gain a kind of tolerance to them, allowing them to become better at defending, attacking, or rebelling against something they fear or hate. If an NPC is pushed in the opposite direction, they will be extremely fearful and paranoid, and show this in dialogue.
Positive emotions include liking or appreciating something. An NPC may like flowers, trees, birds, dogs, cats, or music. When these things are present, they will act cheerful, make comments on how pleasant something is, or show appreciation.
NPCs can use positive and negative emotions in interesting ways, shaping who they are and how they react. An NPC may enjoy killing or stealing, or enjoy seeing combat instead of running away in fear. A sex slave may enjoy being hurt or humiliated, or tied up. A miner would enjoy rocks and stone when others wouldn't care, just as a lumberjack or carpenter would appreciate wood and trees, a banker would appreciate gold, a gaurd would appreciate peace, a mayor would appreciate buildings, a fighter would appreciate swords, a druid would appreciate nature, and a mage would appreciate spells and magic items.
NPCs will have no real reaction to things that they have no strong emotions for. Ask a miner about swordfighting and he'll shrug or say he knows nothing about it, or doesn't care.
NPCs may have default sets of emotional reaction templates based on their chosen class, but since they can evolve emotionally to like or hate anything, they can become any type of NPC based on experience. A noble gaurd can becoem corrupt or malicious, a priest can become greedy, a peasant can become a beggar and a thief, or a bandit.
[edit] Secrets
Secrets are pieces of information that others should not know. Secrets can include passwords, secret messages, a handshake belonging to a guild, a number, a name, a specific item, a location, a time, a building, etc.
How secrets are used depends on the creativity of NPC motivations. Why does an NPC want something? Or why would a player want something?
A secretive guild that deals in thievery might be of interest to a plaayer or NPC gaurd, who would ask a known member about the guild location or password. A noble guild would be sought after by shady individuals who want to infiltrate it.
All players and NPCs have personal information, and this personal information can be extracted by psychics, magic, potions, threatening, torture, or by volunteering information.
If a guild has a password of GHJK then players in that guild have "Guild password: GHJK" under personal information. If a psionic were to extract it, they would now have the text under their personal information.
In torture and threats, if the threat is about information, the person's reply can be to select from personal information and give it to the torturer.
Personal information can be useful for knowing how to unlock magical doors and chests, how to enter a guild without being turned down, where to find someone, when to find someone, when a planned event will take place, and other details.
Personal information expires when its "subject" exprires, such as a guild disbanding, an NPC being killed, or a building being destroyed, when the information was about that thing specifically.
As personal information becomes more complex, NPCs and players can try to extract it out of others in more meaningful ways.
More mundane personal information includes basic knowledge the player already knows about himself. This includes what city and house he lives in, what kind of key he needs to unlock something, what guild he belongs to, and general things that are known to himself. If someone manages to extract this information, they will know more about the player by learning their home, guild, etc. This is stored under "Information about others," which includes facts about players and NPCs encountered so far.
[edit] Arguments
Dialogue is about conflict. A game like Dungeon Siege has your characters conflicting against multiple enemies. Monkey Island uses dialogue, but most of it results in the same outcome, a peaceful solution or a restart of dialogue to arrive back at that solution.
Conflicting dialogue is the use of dialogue that will often have more outcomes based on differences of opinion. They can result in winning a conversation, losing it, reaching a compromise, or both parties being satisfied. Conflicted dialogue can lead to you or the opponent dealing with things in a passive aggressive, aggressive, or avoidant approach. It can lead to giving in, to bullying, to compromising, or to honoring a conflict. Rarely do two parties end up in perfect agreement. Agreement usually happens when people are in the same group, clan, or guild, or have a common goal, and in this case their conflicts are smaller and less intense.
Opposing guilds and factions tend to have greater dialogue conflicts which can lead to one sided bitter agreements, leading to rivalries, betrayals, or taking advantage of the other side through agreements, contras, tariffs, taxes, punishments, laws, or moral or religious codes against the other group or individual. The balance between bitter disagreement and perfect agreement lies in the middle ground, which is most common between two unrelated groups or goals that are not directly opposing. Townspeople and peasants fit in to this category, and may have conflicts that are based on compromise or both parties getting something out of it, but not escalating to severe disagreement or combat unless there is an extremely differing viewpoint. Townspeople typically deal in the middle ground of conflict, from day to day conversations, trade, buying and selling, offering and requesting goods and services, and just making conversation, discussion, and small talk.
[edit] Comments
Comments happen after a an NPC has looked at a player or NPC. Comments are based on appearance such as clothing quality, armor and weapon quality, notoriety, reputation, outlaw or criminal status, emblems and equipment of notorious or famous organizations and guilds, clothing and equipment of a particular trade or profession. Comments are done sparingly, so they do not flood the area or happen all the time. When they do happen, it may include an offer to buy something or a request to fight something or make something based on appropriate needs of the NPC and appropriate equipment of the player. NPC comments to other NPCs can create gratitude in the case of a compliment, or anger in the case of an insult. A noble scoffing at a peasant may anger the peasant, who will avoid the noble, try to attack the noble, passively steal from the noble, or tell his friends to stay away from the noble. Comments state the obvious, but don't always have obvious consequences. NPCs have secondary comments based on insults, threats, or attacks from an NPC or player that happen within a few seconds of their comment. This might include begging for mercy, apologizing, begging for forgiveness, offering money to spare their life, sobbing, yelling and running away, or becoming angry and stealing or attacking in retaliation. Comments occur on threats, such as monsters, dangerous animals, spells, fire, arrows, swining weapons, throwing things, explosions, blood, and notorious criminals. NPCs will alert other NPCs and alert authorities.
Comments occur on the supernatural, which includes invisible actions, psychic actions, enchantments, spells, and things that are unfamiliar. Most NPCs will react with fear at the unknown, such as a magical creature. NPCs who are familiar with something will react with understanding and confidence rather than fear, but will have fear if danger is present as well. Fear will bring more fear, prompting accusations of witchcraft or sorcery, and rumors of supernatural activity will persist, followed by superstition towards strangers and any slightly abnormal activity.
Drugs and potions will cause maximum fear and paranoia, causing NPCs to fear everything, scream in terror, run away, tell people to fear anything no matter how ordinary, attack random objects, and say unintelligible and random things with no real connection to each other. They may use the dialogue system in a completely wrong way that makes no sense.
[edit] Monster dialogue
Monsters in agressive and non-agressive mode have dialogue. Agressive dialogue conists of threats, grunts, and other noises. Non-agressive dialogue for unintelligent creatures includes animal noises when "talked" to, indicating an emotional state (confused, curious, threatened, annoyed, hungry, weak). Non-agressive and intelligent monsters have dialogue that allows players to talk past a situation and avoid confrontation if successful. While a charismatic character could convince a monster not to attack or threaten them into fear, players can also be at the mercy of monster dialogue.
Monsters may request certain items, targets to be killed, tasks to be done, areas to be attacked, buildings to be destroyed, sacrifices to be made, offerings or payment to get out alive or pass through an area, offering a player or NPC to be trapped or tortured, or having the player agree not to pass or enter.
Tasks may be neutrally aligned such as going in to a dungeon and retrieving an object. They may be good from the monster's perspective such as clearing an area of intruding monsters or people, destroying a harmful building or encampment, defending an area from attackers, or returning a stolen item. They may be evil tasks such as offering another player or NPC, giving up possesions, attacking friendly villagers or animals, stealing from others, killing friendly targets, destroying peaceful buildings, trapping or tricking others, and dooming an NPC in a certain situation such as leading to a trapped location or giving a trapped item.
Tasks and dialogue are based on monster alignment, so a friendly dragon may simply ask the player to leave. Monster dialogue becomes friendlier when a player has the same faction as a monster. Tamed, enslaved, created, pet and summoned monsters have a subservient attitude. Trapped and caged monsters have an angered or depressed attitude. Other attitudes may be present in specific situations such as torture, mind control, fear, docile, content, exploration, mistrust, town and city, and working for a particular player or NPC.
[edit] Emotions
FEAR:
tense anxious afraid nervous worried concerned scared insecure
GUILT: ashamed judged damned convicted condemned undeserving sentenced disgrace remorse contempt
SAD: dejected depressed melancholy sorrowful dismal down gloomy glum forlorn low
LONELY: empty abandoned void hollow nothing alone sunken desolate bleak withdrawn detached aloof distant
HAPPY: cheerful delighted glad pleased elated thrilled smile humour
LOW SELF-WORTH: rejected worthless useless unimportant ignored left out humiliated pathetic shy timid
BEAUTY: charm elegance glamour grace superior excellence lovely delightful charming
CONFIDENCE: assured sure certain positive safe stable balanced grounded brave proud
