[Ideas] A better Persuasion game

[Tommy]

Really just want to feel your vibes on a couple of off-and-on mod ideas I can think off. This one is about the persuasion wheel minie-game.As implemented in vanilla it is pretty boring once you get the hang which should normally take not long. So it's highly unsatisfactory. I particularly dislike that you can bombard an NPC a hundred times with the "speech routine" and he can do nothing but listen... Not very immersive as in RL, at one point sure he would say "Listen, I gotta go..."Then there is the Persuasion Overhaul mod. Is any of you familiar with that? It's concept has some validity but if you are unlucky enough you can really mess up your disposition at the most inopportune times. Like for example when you need to get the dispo on Volonaro to 70 in order to continue with the Bruma Mages recommendation. Since it's intended to be a quest for a low level PC, chances are your speechcraft is low and you will never get dispo up to that level. OK, then there are scrolls, potions and spells to charm the NPC, but these are only erratically available with magic merchants... so if you hit it bad enough you just cannot complete the Bruma recommendation at the time it clearly is foreseen in the game.... and if you play a Mage you do have to have access to the Arcane University fairly early, or not?So is this aspect of the game at all bothering you?Any ideas what could be done about it?

[Tommy]

Sorry, need to continue in a second post as the editor drives me nuts It will not scroll down and stay there.Here are some ideas:Limit the number of times you can turn the wheel with a single NPC in a day, depending on your Speechcraft skill, maybe in combination with your Personality: Novice max 2 or 3 times, Apprentice max 3 or 4 times, Journeyman and up 4 or 5 times, expert 5 if JM is limited to 4. Never more than 5 times because who would need that??Once you have used up your turns with an NPC for the day, you can only talk to him in 24 (game) hours again (next day). At least in would force the newbie PC to keep talking to more people instead of bugging the same one over and over again.If you talk to people after 8 pm in an inn, you get an extra turn because people all had a couple of drinks and are more open to chatting... :biggrin:Or better yet: The possibility to invite the NPC to a drink instead of just using the bribing option! :biggrin: However not sure at all if such could be implemented and how.Anyway, just a few thoughts.... any feedback apprecciated

[Dwip]

Re: Editor scrolling - IE user? Putting the forums in compatability view fixes that particular annoyance. At least it does for me.I think the biggest thing you could possibly do is to either eliminate bribery, or to make it either excessively expensive, work only once, or some combination of those. As it is, I'd never use the Persuasion minigame when I could simply bribe my way. Money is cheap.I feel fairly unqualified to speak to the number of tries possible, and your numbers seem as good as anything. The other thing you might want to think about is allowing the player to keep going as long as they were actually successful, or successful to a certain degree. So a novice could fail two times before the NPC got annoyed and told them to go away, apprentice 3 times, etc etc. The idea there is that nothing succeeds like success, and if you're flattering the hell out of them or making them laugh constantly or whatever, they're a lot more likely to stand there and listen to you.The inn thing works, although I'd maybe make it in an inn, period, to account for varying NPC schedules. As far as inviting people to an inn, the way I'd do that is to have a dialogue topic along the lines of "Care to have a drink?" Have a series of possible responses using the CS random response list. You'd need to have X number of "Sure, let's go to the inn!" responses, plus a series of "No, I'm busy" or "It's 8am!" or whatever responses that would become possible based on whatever dialogue conditions you set. Also, make it more likely to work on an NPC of the opposite sex.How to actually implement that may be a little tricky, and I'm not sure if what I'm going to say here is actually possible, but the logical way would seem to be to feed the NPC reference to a ref variable in a quest script, which would then check the city you're in (or the distance from any given village inn), and use AddScriptPackage to dump on a package to lead the NPC to said inn. Once there, they'd somehow start a conversation with the player. For added fun, pick which inn they go to based either on class or by how much gold the NPC has, for those places with multiple inns to choose from.

[Conner]

I guess my experiences with the persuasion mini-game were much better than y'all's. I used the wheel quite a bit to get my persuasion skill up and didn't even bother with bribery at all except on NPCs that seemed like I really needed their good favor to proceed with. As for a difference at inns after 8pm, I know plenty of folks in real life who change personality pretty significantly once they start getting tipsy, and it's not always toward amicability. Though I do think being able to invite someone for a drink would be a doable extra option, I don't think it should replace bribery, but I also agree with Dwip's notion that time of day might not work so well as a global preset and opposite gender (or same gender for certain NPCs) might easily deserve a bonus toward success with a per NPC option to go the other way altogether (such as the case of someone who'd be raped and really would be offended at the suggestion of anything even a little suggestive. I could see limiting persuasion attempts as Dwip described, but limiting how many times you can talk to any given NPC/per day might be a really bad idea, especially if you've got an NPC with a series of simple quests to impart or what not that requires repeated contact throughout the day. As for picking which inn, there are other factors one could use as well, such as personality. For example, someone miserly would choose the cheaper inn (if they're buying, maybe the more expensive one if you are) despite having more money, while someone else might consistently choose one inn over another for it's brighter atmosphere, and so on. Sorry about running all this into a single paragraph and sort of jumbling the order, but I was trying to address all three posts and add thoughts as they came. Oh, regarding the IE issue, another solution would be to switch to Opera, Firefox, Chrome, or Safari since none of them have that issue, only IE does.

[Tommy]

Thanks Folks for your constructive posts.

As for a difference at inns after 8pm, I know plenty of folks in real life who change personality pretty significantly once they start getting tipsy, and it's not always toward amicability.

Yeah I know that too! But it was just a quick thought I had, and only half good at that.No, I would not kick out bribery for invitations. I agree invitations should be an additional choice option.Also good points about limitations on how many times one could speak to an NPC.I will study your posts in more detail. I have never scripted anything so.... would be pretty big task I guess. One question: Do you guys keep a second OB installation for developing mods? I could imagine to have a total vanilla setup of only OB.esm and say UOP for development and prototype testing, no?And about the editor, at home I have Opera. It's only at work where I must tolerate that lousy IE 8...

[Dwip]

I will study your posts in more detail. I have never scripted anything so.... would be pretty big task I guess. One question: Do you guys keep a second OB installation for developing mods? I could imagine to have a total vanilla setup of only OB.esm and say UOP for development and prototype testing' date=' no?[/quote']The scripting is probably going to be exciting, yes.I don't keep a second setup, so much as I make use of the ability Bash has to do multiple load orders. My dev order is something like just SI and the UOP and the mod I'm testing, and I keep a save around that has just those things activated. Your milage, of course, may vary. More than you maybe wanted to know here.

[Conner]

Thanks Folks for your constructive posts.

Always happy to help where I can.

]As for a difference at inns after 8pm' date=' I know plenty of folks in real life who change personality pretty significantly once they start getting tipsy' date=' and it's not always toward amicability. [/quote'']Yeah I know that too! But it was just a quick thought I had, and only half good at that.

We all do that from time to time.

I will study your posts in more detail. I have never scripted anything so.... would be pretty big task I guess. One question: Do you guys keep a second OB installation for developing mods? I could imagine to have a total vanilla setup of only OB.esm and say UOP for development and prototype testing' date=' no?[/quote']

The scripting is probably going to be exciting' date=' yes.I don't keep a second setup, so much as I make use of the ability Bash has to do multiple load orders. My dev order is something like just SI and the UOP and the mod I'm testing, and I keep a save around that has just those things activated.[/quote']I agree with Dwip, the scripting is certainly doable, but it's not going to be a simple/small undertaking at all.As for a second install for testing/developing, I don't develop except ideas (tried my hand at voice acting and Dwip encouraged me not to continue in that direction. ) so I don't need a second install for development and, while I probably should use a second install, or at least a second load order, for testing, I've done little enough sincere testing to be lazy and just borrow an existing save to use with a given mod temporarily installed instead of figuring out how to set up a second load order/profile. Hana and Arthmoor both talked about grabbing some utility (that I'm too tired to think of the name of right now) to manage secondary full installs for playing the full world mods and such, but I don't think either of them has actually done it. If anything, I'd expect Hana to have because she's the one who'd found it.

And about the editor' date=' at home I have Opera. It's only at work where I must tolerate that lousy IE 8...[/quote']:snicker: Well, there ya' go then! :biggrin:Well, if work won't let you use anything but IE, then go with Dwip's suggestion and set this site to compatibility mode so you can at least post peacefully while there too.

[Tommy]

Testing compatibility view... never did that, didn't even know that such existed... [spamming the editor with junk text...]Haha!! it is working! Editor window now keeps scrolling fine and "stay there" :)Thanks Dwip and Conner!

[Conner]

No problem, mate, it's one of those "features" M$ put into IE in recent editions to allow IE to be used at sites that are actually html compliant rather than made to work for IE..

[Tommy]

Yeah.... Microsoft.... :rolleyes:As to the mod idea itself, I will let this rest for the moment in the sense I cannot commit much time to it and especially learning to script. I will have to start from scratch, will have to check the CS wiki as I remember there are a few tutorials in there. Probably should aim for something really simple to begin with....Then again, a Persuasion "invitiation option" would be a sweet touch to the game I think, so I will remember that. Learning to script is probably useful in any case thinking of Skyrim next year and stuff... so definitely want to get into it... :cool:I know I had a few other mod ideas.... Problem sometimes is for me to actually remember them, or write them down when I have them... .... I'll ask you about them on occasion.

[Dwip]

Well, when you do get around to learning scripting, both Arthmoor and I are fairly decent and can help a bunch. You might also check the tutorials subform, as I've done some writing on scripting concepts.This is probably a pretty hardcore idea for a first script, though, I do agree.

[Tommy]

Thank you Dwip, that's really cool!

[Conner]

Dwip's really quite good at creating tutorials, if/when you decide you're ready to learn scripting, seriously check out his tutorials. Most of them are well worth the read through and if you still get stuck, between Dwip and Arthmoor (and maybe Hana too by then), you're in pretty good hands around here.